6 ms·

Postcard is now open source

126 points by philip1209 1y ago

philip1209 1y ago
Originally shared here in 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33549267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33549267
toomuchtodo 1y ago
Great work Philip.
austinjp 1y ago
Psst... it's down for me. Cloudflare error page says SSL handshake failed.
- philip1209 1y ago
  What's failing - the blog? Seems to be working fine for me and my uptime monitoring hasn't caught anything. Hopefully it's a blip! My hosting setup is . . peculiar: https://www.contraption.co/a-mini-data-center/ https://www.contraption.co/a-mini-data-center/
  - npilk 1y ago
    Your original blog post links to www.postcard.page, which throws a Cloudflare SSL error, but the bare domain https://postcard.page https://postcard.page appears to work fine.
    - philip1209 1y ago
      Ah, thanks. Just pushed a fix for this.
  - robertlagrant 1y ago
    An aside: could you use cloudflare caching to reduce the traffic burden on your Mac Mini?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
ho_lee_phuk 1y ago
[flagged]
- philip1209 1y ago
  Well, this service has been live and maintained for almost 3 years. And, if you self-host, then you can guarantee longevity. Github, Airbnb, Shopify, Stripe, Basecamp, Instacart, Zendesk, Square, and others seem to be staying online, too. I've written more about my Ruby opinions here: https://www.contraption.co/rails-versus-nextjs/ https://www.contraption.co/rails-versus-nextjs/ (Discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130546 )
  - ho_lee_phuk 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - victorbojica 1y ago
      Not sure if you're trolling or not...
- theappsecguy 1y ago
  I mean, do you have a rationale or examples? I find that JS ecosystem is where projects go to die, whether npm libraries or projects. Rails and Ruby on the other hand offers one of the best ecosystems and a lot of stability
  - ho_lee_phuk 1y ago
    [dead]
    - 4b11b4 1y ago
      This is pretty weak evidence, no?
- 1y ago
rmujica 1y ago
It looks amazing! thanks for sharing. I also enjoyed your self-hosting post, I might give it a try.
nanna 1y ago
This looks great but delivery via Amazon SES is a problem. I'm an academic and I tried to set up a work newsletter like this with Listmonk recently, but SES rejected my request to relieve me of sandbox mode for unspecified 'security reasons'. Everything was set up properly, it was under a domain under my personal name, I gave links to my profile page on my university website, ample explanation about what I would do with it (one email ever few months), that I would be the only sender, but they rejected it. So in the end I've opted for a hosted solution... anyone else had similar issues?
- philip1209 1y ago
  Postcard originally used Postmark. But, Postmark deliverability has been decreasing. And, for the open-source version, I wanted to simplify dependencies. So, I moved it to SES. It works for small lists, but won't scale to massive ones. I welcome PRs to add additional sending providers - it wouldn't be onerous.
  - keysdev 1y ago
    Would be nice to have just send using sendmail or what ever smtp server we chose. This is HN, and some of us have already done ip warming and to avoid any big players, as they all drop/block emails without telling their users and are not be trusted for reliable communication.
    - Nextgrid 1y ago
      SMTP is a must. My advice is to never bother with proprietary mailer APIs - you will need to change providers sooner or later (sometimes on short notice, if your current provider temporarily suspended you on a false positive for example), which is much easier when you just need to swap the SMTP credentials vs implementing yet another proprietary API. Plus it makes local testing easier - there's no shortage of "fake SMTP for development" projects out there. Of course, tech bros don't want you to do it, as it reduces their vendor lock-in.
      - 1y ago
miga 1y ago
While I admire social-network-friendly websites, I am afraid that performance is too bad to allow its use instead of a social network. Indeed it is so performance sensitive, that it has blocked my region. Would it not be better to get a static site generator from a standard Markdown posts, and thus assure it is both performant and accessible?
sydbarrett74 1y ago
Thank you, philip1209, for sharing your project. Props. :)
dandano 1y ago
Been a big fan of Postcard, especially seeing how it was another success story of a solo dev making something great using RoR. I’ve been looking through the code base for only 15 mins and I’ve learnt a few things already. Thanks for making this open source!
Abishek_Muthian 1y ago
I like minimalist self-hosted websites, great choice making Postcard open-source! May I ask what were your biggest hurdles building the project and what's the most requested feature from your users? I myself have been building similar project called `Open Payment Host`[1] for couple of years now, but its focused on payments. Say a self-hosted alternative for Gumroad, Buy Me a Coffee, Ko-fi etc. [1] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host
CHUCKEESH 1y ago
[flagged]
Irongirl1 1y ago
Ok, I want to do this..it's past time for me to have a web home, but I am leery because I'm so non-techie. I've made note of most of the stuff I want to use, but I am hoping you can answer a really stupid question about size. How big does the mini pc have to be to simply run a static site and newsletter? I know I'm going to get all-sorts of comments and recently had a terrible experience with a tech bro, so please go easy on me... And if you answer, thanks in advance..

126 points by philip1209 1y ago

Originally shared here in 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33549267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33549267

toomuchtodo 1y ago

Great work Philip.

austinjp 1y ago

Psst... it's down for me. Cloudflare error page says SSL handshake failed.

philip1209 1y ago
What's failing - the blog? Seems to be working fine for me and my uptime monitoring hasn't caught anything. Hopefully it's a blip! My hosting setup is . . peculiar: https://www.contraption.co/a-mini-data-center/ https://www.contraption.co/a-mini-data-center/
- npilk 1y ago
  Your original blog post links to www.postcard.page, which throws a Cloudflare SSL error, but the bare domain https://postcard.page https://postcard.page appears to work fine.
  - philip1209 1y ago
    Ah, thanks. Just pushed a fix for this.
- robertlagrant 1y ago
  An aside: could you use cloudflare caching to reduce the traffic burden on your Mac Mini?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

ho_lee_phuk 1y ago

[flagged]

philip1209 1y ago
Well, this service has been live and maintained for almost 3 years. And, if you self-host, then you can guarantee longevity. Github, Airbnb, Shopify, Stripe, Basecamp, Instacart, Zendesk, Square, and others seem to be staying online, too. I've written more about my Ruby opinions here: https://www.contraption.co/rails-versus-nextjs/ https://www.contraption.co/rails-versus-nextjs/ (Discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130546 )
- ho_lee_phuk 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - victorbojica 1y ago
    Not sure if you're trolling or not...
theappsecguy 1y ago
I mean, do you have a rationale or examples? I find that JS ecosystem is where projects go to die, whether npm libraries or projects. Rails and Ruby on the other hand offers one of the best ecosystems and a lot of stability
- ho_lee_phuk 1y ago
  [dead]
  - 4b11b4 1y ago
    This is pretty weak evidence, no?
1y ago

rmujica 1y ago

It looks amazing! thanks for sharing. I also enjoyed your self-hosting post, I might give it a try.

nanna 1y ago

This looks great but delivery via Amazon SES is a problem. I'm an academic and I tried to set up a work newsletter like this with Listmonk recently, but SES rejected my request to relieve me of sandbox mode for unspecified 'security reasons'. Everything was set up properly, it was under a domain under my personal name, I gave links to my profile page on my university website, ample explanation about what I would do with it (one email ever few months), that I would be the only sender, but they rejected it. So in the end I've opted for a hosted solution... anyone else had similar issues?

philip1209 1y ago
Postcard originally used Postmark. But, Postmark deliverability has been decreasing. And, for the open-source version, I wanted to simplify dependencies. So, I moved it to SES. It works for small lists, but won't scale to massive ones. I welcome PRs to add additional sending providers - it wouldn't be onerous.
- keysdev 1y ago
  Would be nice to have just send using sendmail or what ever smtp server we chose. This is HN, and some of us have already done ip warming and to avoid any big players, as they all drop/block emails without telling their users and are not be trusted for reliable communication.
  - Nextgrid 1y ago
    SMTP is a must. My advice is to never bother with proprietary mailer APIs - you will need to change providers sooner or later (sometimes on short notice, if your current provider temporarily suspended you on a false positive for example), which is much easier when you just need to swap the SMTP credentials vs implementing yet another proprietary API. Plus it makes local testing easier - there's no shortage of "fake SMTP for development" projects out there. Of course, tech bros don't want you to do it, as it reduces their vendor lock-in.
    - 1y ago

miga 1y ago

While I admire social-network-friendly websites, I am afraid that performance is too bad to allow its use instead of a social network. Indeed it is so performance sensitive, that it has blocked my region. Would it not be better to get a static site generator from a standard Markdown posts, and thus assure it is both performant and accessible?

sydbarrett74 1y ago

Thank you, philip1209, for sharing your project. Props. :)

dandano 1y ago

Been a big fan of Postcard, especially seeing how it was another success story of a solo dev making something great using RoR. I’ve been looking through the code base for only 15 mins and I’ve learnt a few things already. Thanks for making this open source!

Abishek_Muthian 1y ago

I like minimalist self-hosted websites, great choice making Postcard open-source! May I ask what were your biggest hurdles building the project and what's the most requested feature from your users? I myself have been building similar project called `Open Payment Host`[1] for couple of years now, but its focused on payments. Say a self-hosted alternative for Gumroad, Buy Me a Coffee, Ko-fi etc. [1] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host

CHUCKEESH 1y ago

[flagged]

Irongirl1 1y ago

Ok, I want to do this..it's past time for me to have a web home, but I am leery because I'm so non-techie. I've made note of most of the stuff I want to use, but I am hoping you can answer a really stupid question about size. How big does the mini pc have to be to simply run a static site and newsletter? I know I'm going to get all-sorts of comments and recently had a terrible experience with a tech bro, so please go easy on me... And if you answer, thanks in advance..