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WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space on the web
- vouaobrasil 2y agoLooks interesting but it won't work on many shared servers on which the only option is PHP/SQL due to it being written in Go.
- WesolyKubeczek 2y agoExplain how they still survive and are the only viable option for anyone in the day and age where $5 VPSes are a thing.
- Veen 2y agoTens of millions of people want to host a WordPress site and very few of them want to deal with setting up a database, editing config files, securing a server. Most of them have no idea what that stuff means.
- WesolyKubeczek 2y agoThen they want a Wordpress, and not this.
- dingnuts 2y agoThat's why companies like WPEngine exist. This doesn't have much to do with the software; non-technical users could use a WPEngine like service for WriteFreely, if someone ran that service
- nucleardog 2y agoShared PHP hosting is a managed service, a VPS is not. Not everyone has the skill set to bridge the gap, and it’s not really economical to hire to fill the gap to support a single site (but it is to support hundreds of sites in a shared hosting environment).
- WesolyKubeczek 2y ago> Shared PHP hosting is a managed service, a VPS is not. Not everyone has the skill set to bridge the gap It has always been very peculiar. You either had very stripped off permissions of what you could do: FTP comes to mind first, and then you still need to understand how Unix permissions work, and then you wish you had SSH; or you get SSH with some stripped off permissions, and then you do need to have the skills to use the Unix system inside; or you find that the underlying PHP/webserver has 6-month-old zero days and someone keeps owning all tenants all the time, but the sysadmins are prima donnas on power trip who know better. And you are still in a firmly DIY area most of the time, with enough footgun to do you harm. Oh, and if you want a custom domain, welcome to the special hell. Maybe I had bad experiences 15 years ago, but in my opinion, they should be called "mismanaged services".
- dingnuts 2y agothe industry is also mostly dead. non technical users now use sites like Wix with a builder. Technical ones get a VPS or cloud solution and probably don't want LAMP anyway The only non technical people using shared hosting now are people who paid to have a site built for their small business twenty years ago and don't need to update anything, so they just keep paying the bills The whole industry has been on life support for a long time. just look at all the brands Endurance has bought up. That hasn't happened because all of those hosts were making a ton of money
- BeetleB 2y agoBeen using shared hosting for 20 years. It's easily easier than VPS. Not sure what you mean by stripped off permissions. Yes, I'm not root, but most VPS providers don't give me root access either (at least not for cheap). SFTP has always worked, and continues to do so. Of course you need to understand UNIX permissions. You also need to understand what a directory is, what a file is, etc. It's not asking too much. I've tried 3 different providers, and they all had SSH access. I've not heard of one that doesn't. The only problems I had with PHP servers is that the admins are doing their job and removing old vulnerable versions. Which is a pain for me but it's why I pay them. The whole point of shared hosting is they're taking care of the zero day exploits for me. Custom domains? Not sure what you mean. Every provider I looked at it made it painless to use. Having a simple LAMP stack is dead simple to use (yes, as long as you know basic UNIX). VPS: I suddenly need to set up the web server, and manage DOS attacks, etc? And keep track of all the security vulnerabilities and keep upgrading? I don't want to deal with that pain. With shared hosting, I need to "fix" things less than once a year. My web apps happily work without my needing to log in. With a VPS, I have to pay more only so that I have to do more work? No thanks.
- rchaud 2y agoCPanel simplicity vs a blank slate CLI that doesn't do anything before an endless list of "sudo xyz" commands are run.
- vouaobrasil 2y agoPlenty of people just want something point and click like cPanel with one click wordpress installs, email filtering options, etc.
- jnsplm 2y agoI happily pay some money for not maintaining another server/service in my private time. 10€/month for a managed server with ssh, Postgres, MySQL, mail, and backups is worth it for me: https://uberspace.de/en/ https://uberspace.de/en/ (not affiliated, just a happy customer)
- abdullahkhalids 2y agoThere are 26 million software developers in the world [1]. Maybe 10 times as many people who understand some programming. There are over 8 billion people in the world. How do the remaining people create a blog? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demograph...
- velcrovan 2y agoGenuine question, is shared hosting still the go-to option for many HN readers when setting up a personal site?
- vouaobrasil 2y agoIt is for me...cheap and it works for basic things.
- marpstar 2y agoTo an extent, yes. In my case, I've done a lot of WordPress consulting over the past 10 years and I'm grandfathered into a very inexpensive shared hosting plan from Site5 that gives me WHM access and the ability to create as many sites as I want. Works fine for static sites. Works fine for anything PHP. PHP versions are kept up to date. But the cost of an additional site is effectively cost-free, so I'm hosting several small sites for small organizations and individuals.
- immibis 2y agoFor me, no way. Not when VPSes scale down to $3.50/month.
- djvdq 2y agoVPS I'm using (1GB RAM/10GB disk) cost me 75 PLN a year, which is something around $19.
- vidarh 2y agoThen there's the hosted service at write.as.
- meiraleal 2y agoEven worse: it has JS. How dare they not make something that would run in my 1995 computer?
- xd1936 2y agoFrom what I understand, Mastodon is to Twitter as WriteFreely is to WordPress.com/Medium/Blogger/etc. Fediverse-aware, open-source, with a flagship SaaS hosted instance available at https://write.as https://write.as. If microblogging hadn't fried my brain and I was interested in spinning up a longform blog, this is the software I would choose.
- MiscIdeaMaker99 2y agoIt also speaks ActivityPub, and can thus talk to Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc. servers.
- troymc 2y agoWordPress.com is also based on open-source software (WordPress) and can connect to the Fediverse via Activitypub [1]. Similar to WriteFreely, there's even a WordPress.com desktop app [2]. That said, I understand the allure of a simple, minimal, distraction-free writing and reading experience. [1] https://wordpress.com/support/enter-the-fediverse/ https://wordpress.com/support/enter-the-fediverse/ [2] https://apps.wordpress.com/desktop/ https://apps.wordpress.com/desktop/
- doublepg23 2y agoI think a lot of people may prefer WriteFreely’s Go stack vs. WordPresses PHP - for right or wrong reasons.
- spencerchubb 2y agowhy would a writer need to know or care about the tech stack
- doctorpangloss 2y agoIt’s all aesthetic experiences. Some people care, so it matters. I know what you’re getting at and the world you want to live in. Listen, why do people care if some story they read was written by a bot, for example? The people reading Reddit’s top creative writing venues (AITA comes to mind) clearly don’t know and don’t care. But many people do care. It’s arbitrary. It’s just aesthetic. Nobody needs this stuff, nobody needs Fediverse or ActivityPub.
- flusteredBias 2y agoHow does this compare to bearblog
- cxr 2y agoWriteFreely - is AGPL-licensed - supports themes - requires JS (to post) - supports ActivityPub Bearblog: - is MIT-licensed - doesn't support themes - doesn't require JS - uses RSS/Atom for syndication
- manuelmoreale 2y agoBearblog does support themes. You can add custom CSS in your dashboard. https://docs.bearblog.dev/styling/ https://docs.bearblog.dev/styling/
- cxr 2y agoThanks for correcting me. I see now that the Bearblog landing page lists "free themes". I'm having trouble, though, making sense of the "no stylesheets" selling point(?) at the top of the page, especially given what you are now saying.
- manuelmoreale 2y agoI think it’s no external style sheet and everything is inlined
- thimabi 2y agoBesides other differences, Bear Blog does not offer a self-hosted solution such as WriteFreely.
- eitland 2y agoSeems to be self-hostable: here is the code, it is even MIT licensed: https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/ https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/
- zamubafoo 2y agoI use this in my homelab for drafting long form thoughts. It's nice since it feels more ephemeral than making a page in a wiki or making a page that gets rendered and hosted statically. I used to run Ghost for this, but at some point the pervasive push to use Ghost's paid features for an internally hosted blog irked me enough to rip it out.
- IshKebab 2y agoCan you paste images into the editor?
- _neil 2y agoWondering the same. It seems like the answer is no but maybe it's because I'm not logged in?
- thebaer 2y agoAs long as they're hosted somewhere on the internet, you can add images with regular Markdown. Built-in support for photo management is in the pipeline though!
- stog 2y agoIs Snap.as open source too?
- taivlam 2y agoNo, currently - Snap.as ( https://snap.as/ https://snap.as/ ) doesn't seem to be open-source and is only available (as a service) if you have a paid Write.as account ( https://write.as/pricing https://write.as/pricing ). I tried looking at the Snap.as repo ( https://github.com/snapas https://github.com/snapas ) and Snap Freely organization ( https://github.com/snapfreely https://github.com/snapfreely ) on GitHub, respectively; but both seem empty.
- RistrettoMike 2y agoI tried WriteFreely (and some of their other stuff) a year or so ago, but found it to be a little too limited for what I was trying to achieve with my personal sites (as a layman/non-web-dev). Ended up using https://Blot.im/ https://Blot.im/ very happily, with my photosite being the personal example I've put the most time into: https://ristrettoshots.com/ https://ristrettoshots.com/ Edit pages mostly in regular markdown (+ a few simple Blot-specific tags), drop some images into a Dropbox folder, done. Site built. :)
- cyberax 2y agoI tried WriteFreely, I really tried. I even wrote a bi-directional synchronizer for it, so you can write locally in Obsidian and sync posts to Write.as: https://github.com/Cyberax/writeas-sync https://github.com/Cyberax/writeas-sync But I gave up on it. Sorry. It's not a viable project. It's backed by a one-man team, and so the support is unresponsive. The API is bad, and they impose ridiculously low rate limits. Like, less than 0.1 request per second. I understand the need to protect against bots, but hey, Cloudflare exists, and I'm paying for a subscription. I then tried to self-host it. There is no official Docker support, but I cobbled it up. It works ok-ish, but the open source version is NOT the same as the one running on Write.as! For example, there is no support for drag&drop image uploads. I then looked at the source code, and it's just a mess. There is no layering, the view makes direct requests to the database, and there is very little customization potential. For example, you can't even insert a script reference at the bottom of the page, without patching the source code.
- davidblue 2y agoLove to see it! (Thanks again, Studio of Musings, for [saving my life](https://write.as/community/chat-with-david-blue https://write.as/community/chat-with-david-blue).)
- system7rocks 2y agoI used WriteFreely for a while. I loved its simplicity. It attracted a fascinating set of writers too. But the price kept going up, updates were slow, and I think the project lacks some focus. I switched to OMG.LOL. I want a blog that is pretty constrained and forces me to make decisions. And keeps things pretty cheap.
- yencabulator 2y agoPreviously (2018): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18432327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18432327