5 ms·

Syte: Simple but powerful packaged personal site

200 points by saym 14y ago

tomasien 14y ago
If you ever build this into an easy setup UI, I think this would just be humongous. This combines what I like about about.me and what I find useful about tumblr. I've been trying to customize my tumblr for a while now to look almost exactly like this, but you did it FOR ME! You're the man/woman
- saym 14y ago
  Alas it is not I who wrote it, though I do have a fork I've been tinkering with. Feel free to tweet at the author though, I'm sure he'd love to hear from you! https://twitter.com/rigoneri https://twitter.com/rigoneri
- rigoneri 14y ago
  Hey tomasien, I've thought about making this into a service but haven't had time working on my current startup. In the mean time there are some folks that are solving the same problem check them out http://flavors.me/ http://flavors.me/
- bpatrianakos 14y ago
  I started working on something that's basically Syte but as a service a while back. I like the idea of being able to "own" your content from other services in a way and to be able to use sites/services like Evernote, Dropbox, Twitter, etc. as a kind of personal blog/scrapbook/private journal. Now it's morphed into something slightly different but a lot of it is still there. I won't shamelessly promote here but you can see the link in my profile if you want. It's getting real close to being finished but I must be honest with myself and admit that things keep popping up that keep me from launching when I say I will so I'm done giving dates. But it will open. I just pushed a pretty important update to the staging server this morning actually.
obilgic 14y ago
this should be saas
- SwaroopH 14y ago
  I have something in the works. Will try to post on HN in a few days.
- ed209 14y ago
  that's what I thought so I'm building http://qiip.me http://qiip.me
zzleeper 14y ago
" I would like you to choose a different adjacent color as the ones used by the people below" Any clue about why this?
- selectout 14y ago
  He's going for a similar style as Svbtle(.com) where each person that blogs has their own identity that corresponds to a color/image so they can easily be cataloged and seen.
  - spindritf 14y ago
    Either that, or a rainbow of users.
- kayoone 14y ago
  with enough people taking part he could use every profile color as a pixel and create pictures where each pixel links to a profile...thats just my idea though
kayoone 14y ago
very awesome! make this easy to use for the mainstream and you have a winner!
downey 14y ago
Looks very compelling. I'm tempted to try this out... only thing is that I don't want my site to look too cookie-cutter if Syte catches on. :-)
alexbowe 14y ago
It's cool :) and I just want to say that the readme is awesome. I love developers who communicate :P
paulitex 14y ago
Repost of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4098430 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4098430 Here's where he discussed the metrics around last time it hit #1 here: http://rigoneri.com/post/25804668500 http://rigoneri.com/post/25804668500
- saym 14y ago
  Apologies, I wasn't a HN reader when this was posted.
  - ch0wn 14y ago
    No need to apologize. If everyone had seen it last time, it wouldn't be #1 right now.
brianlovin 14y ago
I remember this popping up here a few months ago. Definitely looking forward to WordPress integration, but this looks amazing so far.
ypeterholmes 14y ago
The aesthetics are nice but from a usability standpoint having the navigation as a mix of external links and syte navigation seems like a poor choice. *edit. I see now that it's just twitter and the contact that leave. Not bad.
- Eventh 14y ago
  Twitter and the other services are only external links if they are wrongly configured, API calls fails, or JavaScript has not finished loading/is not available. Contacts is just 'mailto:'.
chuppo 14y ago
"My" personal site? Or facebooks,twitters,foursquare extended profile of me? Who would want their personal site to be connected to so many other sites, all whom are more powerful and make more money on your site than you?
- ed209 14y ago
  I post my stuff all over the web, I don't want to repost all that to my own personal site. Posting to all the other big players is great for discovery, grabbing all that content to post to my own site is great for email footers, business cards etc I built http://qiip.me http://qiip.me exactly for this, see mine at http://qiip.me/edlea http://qiip.me/edlea
  - marekmroz 14y ago
    Personally I would prefer a reverse set-up, post everything to my own site, automatically re-post to big players of my choosing.
    - ed209 14y ago
      That's not a pattern I've noticed generally. A lot of the sites I deal with are very specialised with content. For example, posting a listing to Etsy.com requires some very specific details which are not relevant to other sites. To post an Etsy listing, share the same photos on Flickr, share that content to a blog post would require a lot of data at the central point to spread to all those services. I think it's easier in the cases I've seen to post to the end services and pull that data back in. Shared fields are not often more than Title, Images, some Body Text. Then there are hundreds of smaller options from price to tags to materials to photosets to choose from. The other issue here is that where cross posting is easy, usually the main service already provides it, i.e. posting from Instagram to Flickr. If you include services like http://IFTTT.com http://IFTTT.com then you're pretty covered for this case.
bjourne 14y ago
But isn't it a big problem that all the blog posts are loaded using Javascript? It means your blog will be fully invisible to Googlebot and anyone coming from search engines. The purpose of a blog is, at least partially, to have readers but loading content via Javascript makes that harder to get.
- markild 14y ago
  At the moment, it seems that you need to use Tumblr for blog posts, the author also mentions maybe extending it to Wordpress. I think the entire idea here is that it is an aggregator of sorts. The site itself contains nothing that does not exist elsewhere, and judging from one of the open pull requests where someone has implemented local blog support, the author does not intend to store anything locally. Though I like that he has open sourced this, I find it really weird that this is not offered as a service.
  - ronnix 14y ago
    If you want this as a service, you may want to look at http://about.me/ http://about.me/
    - ed209 14y ago
      also http://flavors.me http://flavors.me and my project http://qiip.me http://qiip.me
- philip1209 14y ago
  This pull adds local markdown support: https://github.com/rigoneri/syte/pull/93 https://github.com/rigoneri/syte/pull/93 Also, rigoneri remarks here that he doesn't want to rely on databases: https://github.com/rigoneri/syte/pull/66 https://github.com/rigoneri/syte/pull/66
- VMG 14y ago
  Googlebot executes javascript: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-ajax-execute-15169.html http://www.seroundtable.com/google-ajax-execute-15169.html
timdl 14y ago
Good job, and OK, it looks good, but: a. it's on tumblr so SEO will be crap or non existent, b. it loads using JS (as bjourne pointed out), so posts will be invisible to Search Engines. You should try, somehow, to integrate it with wordpress.
- randomchars 14y ago
  What's wrong with tumblr's SEO?
  - timdl 14y ago
    Tumblr SEO is catastrophic. I had two tumblr blogs for a few weeks, they never got into Google before 3rd page. I created a wordpress blog in two days I was number One...
forkrulassail 14y ago
http://bit.ly/scicombinator http://bit.ly/scicombinator
pajju 14y ago
Its a smart app design which is nothing but a content aggregator from your - Twitter account, GitHub, Dribbble, Instagram, Foursquare, your Tumblr blog, Last.fm, SoundCloud and Bitbucket. It requests for all these services via Javascript on the fly. Cool! So it keeps no Database locally but only requires some computing + lots of Bandwidth in the host server. Its super smart design as it fits super fine for the Heroku Free Tier. :)
robinduckett 14y ago
This is Svbtle done right - Not closed and proprietary (apple) but open and free for extension (open source).
emillon 14y ago
> There is only one rule. You can use, reproduce and do whatever you want with Syte but I would like you to choose a different adjacent color as the ones used by the people below. So... Does it qualify as free software? Technically it's a limitation of what can be done with it, and it limits the total number of users.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  The way it's worded makes it seem like a request rather than a condition of use. You may do whatever but I would like...
- Evbn 14y ago
  Different color from, they mean? Creator: add a bit to default to a randomly chosen color, or even blacklist your special colors, to reduce duplication by the laziest.
JamesChevalier 14y ago
Nice job! I had a similar idea with https://github.com/JamesChevalier/Launch-Soon https://github.com/JamesChevalier/Launch-Soon but Syte is a much better execution. Thanks for this.
fiveliterstang 14y ago
I don't really understand the implementation here, is this a "baked" system or does it require python hosting/node.js and the like on your web server? Also why do we need to sign up for developer keys at all these services? Kinda crazy
mertemin 14y ago
I really liked the design, but didn't want to do all the integrations etc. I created a similar HTML design for the ones who may want to use it immediately. In addition, I created an tumblr theme and submitted it to tumblr. For details, https://github.com/mertemin/purus https://github.com/mertemin/purus
navs 14y ago
Ok so this is like a lifestream? I remember lifestreams being huge a few years back when twitter just started to really kick off. When I say huge, I do mean in my little circles.

200 points by saym 14y ago

If you ever build this into an easy setup UI, I think this would just be humongous. This combines what I like about about.me and what I find useful about tumblr. I've been trying to customize my tumblr for a while now to look almost exactly like this, but you did it FOR ME! You're the man/woman

saym 14y ago
Alas it is not I who wrote it, though I do have a fork I've been tinkering with. Feel free to tweet at the author though, I'm sure he'd love to hear from you! https://twitter.com/rigoneri https://twitter.com/rigoneri
rigoneri 14y ago
Hey tomasien, I've thought about making this into a service but haven't had time working on my current startup. In the mean time there are some folks that are solving the same problem check them out http://flavors.me/ http://flavors.me/
bpatrianakos 14y ago
I started working on something that's basically Syte but as a service a while back. I like the idea of being able to "own" your content from other services in a way and to be able to use sites/services like Evernote, Dropbox, Twitter, etc. as a kind of personal blog/scrapbook/private journal. Now it's morphed into something slightly different but a lot of it is still there. I won't shamelessly promote here but you can see the link in my profile if you want. It's getting real close to being finished but I must be honest with myself and admit that things keep popping up that keep me from launching when I say I will so I'm done giving dates. But it will open. I just pushed a pretty important update to the staging server this morning actually.

obilgic 14y ago

this should be saas

SwaroopH 14y ago
I have something in the works. Will try to post on HN in a few days.
ed209 14y ago
that's what I thought so I'm building http://qiip.me http://qiip.me

zzleeper 14y ago

" I would like you to choose a different adjacent color as the ones used by the people below" Any clue about why this?

selectout 14y ago
He's going for a similar style as Svbtle(.com) where each person that blogs has their own identity that corresponds to a color/image so they can easily be cataloged and seen.
- spindritf 14y ago
  Either that, or a rainbow of users.
kayoone 14y ago
with enough people taking part he could use every profile color as a pixel and create pictures where each pixel links to a profile...thats just my idea though

kayoone 14y ago

very awesome! make this easy to use for the mainstream and you have a winner!

downey 14y ago

Looks very compelling. I'm tempted to try this out... only thing is that I don't want my site to look too cookie-cutter if Syte catches on. :-)

alexbowe 14y ago

It's cool :) and I just want to say that the readme is awesome. I love developers who communicate :P

paulitex 14y ago

Repost of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4098430 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4098430 Here's where he discussed the metrics around last time it hit #1 here: http://rigoneri.com/post/25804668500 http://rigoneri.com/post/25804668500

saym 14y ago
Apologies, I wasn't a HN reader when this was posted.
- ch0wn 14y ago
  No need to apologize. If everyone had seen it last time, it wouldn't be #1 right now.

brianlovin 14y ago

I remember this popping up here a few months ago. Definitely looking forward to WordPress integration, but this looks amazing so far.

ypeterholmes 14y ago

The aesthetics are nice but from a usability standpoint having the navigation as a mix of external links and syte navigation seems like a poor choice. *edit. I see now that it's just twitter and the contact that leave. Not bad.

Eventh 14y ago
Twitter and the other services are only external links if they are wrongly configured, API calls fails, or JavaScript has not finished loading/is not available. Contacts is just 'mailto:'.

chuppo 14y ago

"My" personal site? Or facebooks,twitters,foursquare extended profile of me? Who would want their personal site to be connected to so many other sites, all whom are more powerful and make more money on your site than you?

ed209 14y ago
I post my stuff all over the web, I don't want to repost all that to my own personal site. Posting to all the other big players is great for discovery, grabbing all that content to post to my own site is great for email footers, business cards etc I built http://qiip.me http://qiip.me exactly for this, see mine at http://qiip.me/edlea http://qiip.me/edlea
- marekmroz 14y ago
  Personally I would prefer a reverse set-up, post everything to my own site, automatically re-post to big players of my choosing.
  - ed209 14y ago
    That's not a pattern I've noticed generally. A lot of the sites I deal with are very specialised with content. For example, posting a listing to Etsy.com requires some very specific details which are not relevant to other sites. To post an Etsy listing, share the same photos on Flickr, share that content to a blog post would require a lot of data at the central point to spread to all those services. I think it's easier in the cases I've seen to post to the end services and pull that data back in. Shared fields are not often more than Title, Images, some Body Text. Then there are hundreds of smaller options from price to tags to materials to photosets to choose from. The other issue here is that where cross posting is easy, usually the main service already provides it, i.e. posting from Instagram to Flickr. If you include services like http://IFTTT.com http://IFTTT.com then you're pretty covered for this case.

bjourne 14y ago

But isn't it a big problem that all the blog posts are loaded using Javascript? It means your blog will be fully invisible to Googlebot and anyone coming from search engines. The purpose of a blog is, at least partially, to have readers but loading content via Javascript makes that harder to get.

markild 14y ago
At the moment, it seems that you need to use Tumblr for blog posts, the author also mentions maybe extending it to Wordpress. I think the entire idea here is that it is an aggregator of sorts. The site itself contains nothing that does not exist elsewhere, and judging from one of the open pull requests where someone has implemented local blog support, the author does not intend to store anything locally. Though I like that he has open sourced this, I find it really weird that this is not offered as a service.
- ronnix 14y ago
  If you want this as a service, you may want to look at http://about.me/ http://about.me/
  - ed209 14y ago
    also http://flavors.me http://flavors.me and my project http://qiip.me http://qiip.me
philip1209 14y ago
This pull adds local markdown support: https://github.com/rigoneri/syte/pull/93 https://github.com/rigoneri/syte/pull/93 Also, rigoneri remarks here that he doesn't want to rely on databases: https://github.com/rigoneri/syte/pull/66 https://github.com/rigoneri/syte/pull/66
VMG 14y ago
Googlebot executes javascript: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-ajax-execute-15169.html http://www.seroundtable.com/google-ajax-execute-15169.html

timdl 14y ago

Good job, and OK, it looks good, but: a. it's on tumblr so SEO will be crap or non existent, b. it loads using JS (as bjourne pointed out), so posts will be invisible to Search Engines. You should try, somehow, to integrate it with wordpress.

randomchars 14y ago
What's wrong with tumblr's SEO?
- timdl 14y ago
  Tumblr SEO is catastrophic. I had two tumblr blogs for a few weeks, they never got into Google before 3rd page. I created a wordpress blog in two days I was number One...

forkrulassail 14y ago

http://bit.ly/scicombinator http://bit.ly/scicombinator

pajju 14y ago

Its a smart app design which is nothing but a content aggregator from your - Twitter account, GitHub, Dribbble, Instagram, Foursquare, your Tumblr blog, Last.fm, SoundCloud and Bitbucket. It requests for all these services via Javascript on the fly. Cool! So it keeps no Database locally but only requires some computing + lots of Bandwidth in the host server. Its super smart design as it fits super fine for the Heroku Free Tier. :)

robinduckett 14y ago

This is Svbtle done right - Not closed and proprietary (apple) but open and free for extension (open source).

emillon 14y ago

> There is only one rule. You can use, reproduce and do whatever you want with Syte but I would like you to choose a different adjacent color as the ones used by the people below. So... Does it qualify as free software? Technically it's a limitation of what can be done with it, and it limits the total number of users.

Karunamon 14y ago
The way it's worded makes it seem like a request rather than a condition of use. You may do whatever but I would like...
Evbn 14y ago
Different color from, they mean? Creator: add a bit to default to a randomly chosen color, or even blacklist your special colors, to reduce duplication by the laziest.

JamesChevalier 14y ago

Nice job! I had a similar idea with https://github.com/JamesChevalier/Launch-Soon https://github.com/JamesChevalier/Launch-Soon but Syte is a much better execution. Thanks for this.

fiveliterstang 14y ago

I don't really understand the implementation here, is this a "baked" system or does it require python hosting/node.js and the like on your web server? Also why do we need to sign up for developer keys at all these services? Kinda crazy

mertemin 14y ago

I really liked the design, but didn't want to do all the integrations etc. I created a similar HTML design for the ones who may want to use it immediately. In addition, I created an tumblr theme and submitted it to tumblr. For details, https://github.com/mertemin/purus https://github.com/mertemin/purus

navs 14y ago

Ok so this is like a lifestream? I remember lifestreams being huge a few years back when twitter just started to really kick off. When I say huge, I do mean in my little circles.