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Show HN: Pagecord – Effortless blogging from your inbox
Hey HN
I’ve been at a loose end for the past few days so I decided to build a thing. I’m largely devoid of original ideas so I built a (micro-) blogging app with a slight twist: you run it using email.
All you need is an email account. No new tools to wrangle. No password to forget.
Compose in your favourite email editor and send to a secret address. Pagecord does the rest.
It's great for bloggy long-form writing, but it’s maybe even more fun for micro-blogging your thoughts as you would a Twitter feed (you can subscribe to people/blogs using RSS).
I figured nobody would pay so it's entirely free (I do accept donations ).
I put together a short video for the home page which shows it in action. There’s an FAQ at https://pagecord.com/faq https://pagecord.com/faq and you can see my actual feed at https://pagecord.com/pagecord https://pagecord.com/pagecord.
That’s it. Just a bit of fun, but maybe some people will enjoy it. Let me know what you think and have a lovely day!
-- Olly
- lylo 3y agoOP here. If you're interested, Pagecord was built using Ruby on Rails and uses the marvellous Postmark for receiving email. https://pagecord.com/pagecord/5f5e121 https://pagecord.com/pagecord/5f5e121
- christoff12 3y agoOne of the first products I enjoyed using after learning about startups in general, and yc in particular, was Posterous[1] specifically for this feature. Very cool. [1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/posterous https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/posterous
- AstroJetson 3y agoAfter being acquired by Twitter, the blogs got new life as https://posthaven.com/ https://posthaven.com/.
- lylo 3y agoYeah I love Posthaven and it's a much richer product. It does still cost cash money though, which is a blocker for lots of people. Pagecord is like a super-simple/basic version of that, but free. Its simplicity means it doesn't cost a lot to run.
- airblade 3y agoSimple, clean, does exactly what it says. If only more software was like this :)
- lylo 3y agowell that's very kind :)
- FezzikTheGiant 3y agoI built something like this a couple years ago. very cool!
- FezzikTheGiant 3y agoI think instead of building your own client for displaying the posts, if you linked it with substack/twitter and others it would be a useful tool.
- lylo 3y agoThanks. Alas Twitter/X API is no longer a viable option because of the ridiculous price. No idea about Substack, but probably a different use case. I do think it would make sense to allow Pagecord users to follow other Pagecord users and get an email digest of their blogs every day/week though. Might do that.
- FezzikTheGiant 3y agoyeah that would be pretty cool.
- eltonlin 3y agoI tried it straightaway, because I use the Dictate app to speech-to-text out essays during walks (next to river & wind etc.) rather than typing in enclosed office (a massive impact, I’ve “wrote” 3-4 essays this month vs 0-1 last month). Problem is the voice app’s export feature is only available on email. Technically I can copy the text and put it on Notion, but it’s so many clicks so I’ve been sending it to my own email. The essays are now dispersed in my inbox and I’m still dreading the day to collect them (the essays articulated important insights that were encouraging to me as a solo founder) From now I will try sending emails to your API email address for my future voice essays, then organize them on your web UI
- eltonlin 3y agoJust read Posterous/PostHaven, don’t need their ability to post to Twitter (I find writing to the audience diminishes the quality of my writing - I can’t write things that sound offensive, I can’t write things that matter just to me). I wonder why they shut down Posterous after acquisition, but anyway thanks for making 1 random user’s life better :—)
- lylo 3y agoInteresting, thanks for giving it a spin. Should be pretty straightforward if you have the data in email already!
- lylo 3y agoOn Product Hunt today if there are any generous souls out there wanted to "support" it ;-)