8 ms·

Letterpress — A minimal, Markdown based blogging system written in Python

89 points by an00na 14y ago

unavoidable 14y ago
I wonder if the author knows that "Letterpress" is a rather popular iOS game.
- pervycreeper 14y ago
  Does it matter?
  - joshschreuder 14y ago
    Not overly so, but it does make it hard to be discovered or searched for, especially with the months of links and reviews for the iOS game boosting it in search engines.
  - Codhisattva 14y ago
    It'll matter when the blog guy wants an iOS app and has to call it "LP MAKER PLUS" or something dumb.
  - michaelbuckbee 14y ago
    Setting aside any legal issues, it just seems odd and probably not in the OPs best interest to have a name that is so strongly associated with an extremely popular mobile game.
  - petercooper 14y ago
    Pointless trivia: In the UK, throughout the 80s and 90s there was both a (usually lemon) kitchen cleaner and a lemon juice called Jif. It didn't seem to cause any problems, although the kitchen cleaner became Cif for unrelated reasons.
- kmf 14y ago
  My guess is that if there's a battle of wills that's going to occur, the game will win. It's easier to change a name on a web project than an iOS game. There's months of advertisement that've gone in to Loren's Letterpress at this point.
benrhughes 14y ago
Funnily enough, I just wrote something similar in node[1] and one of my mates has just written one in Go too. Great minds, or something :-) [1]: https://github.com/benrhughes/crashdown https://github.com/benrhughes/crashdown
- lhnn 14y ago
  Would you mind linking to your friend's implementation in Golang? I'm learning the language and want to see how he did it.
  - benrhughes 14y ago
    Sure: http://paulsamways.com/projects/upublish http://paulsamways.com/projects/upublish
revgeeky 14y ago
Built my own a few months back in node for publishing using git to Heroku. Markdown flavored micro blogging is hip!
hendry 14y ago
That's not minimal. 18LOC is minimal https://github.com/kaihendry/sg-hackandtell/blob/master/Makefile https://github.com/kaihendry/sg-hackandtell/blob/master/Make...
- qznc 14y ago
  Use pandoc instead of markdown (the executable), then it gets even smaller. ;)
jacques_chester 14y ago
It's worth remembering that 99.999% of ordinary users will never switch to a static generation blog system, no matter how carefully it is explained. The problem really is that somebody has to pay the piper. I'm going to create a new rule. Chester's First Law: Essential complexity in the problem domain is a conserved quantity. Either your system absorbs and obscures it; or you push it back on the user somehow. Even within a system you can push it around to different places, but it never goes away. Consider: the problem domain for a blogging system is take stuff from an author and produce HTML for readers. Movable Type used to "build" a whole site at a time. Wordpress does it per-view unless you use caching. Wordpress won inter alia because the cost of the complexity was pushed from the authors to the readers -- and it's authors who pick the blogging engine. Static site generators are like Movable Type, in that they take the essential complexity that used to be on the readers and push it back to the author. A more complex system would strike a balance by proactively generating new cached output based on POSTs, not GETs. That would push both halves of the essential complexity into the system itself, away from both authors and readers. At all times, the sum of essential complexity has been conserved.
- clicks 14y ago
  The author's choice is still subject to fads, to what's in vogue, to the zeitgeist. And as of late, the static generation fervor has been getting stronger.
- camus 14y ago
  Wordpress is successfull because it is easy to install and hosting is cheap. Furthermore the basic wordpress set has very little capabilities. (but they are 100% blogger oriented) However wordpress is a pain to customize and extend, i always found drupal was easier to customize for non developpers ( you have to mess with php pretty fast with wordpress ). Drupal is on the contrary a little more complicated to setup , but the basic set up is more powerfull than wordpress ( and the plugin system is better ). That's why i dont think non php scripts can be popular to non programmers. you can just drop some python or some ruby on a webserver and expect it to work just like php does, And few shared hosting providers support mod_python or stuff like that ( which is the shame because i see no reason why mod_python is worse than mod_php and we would have a whole generation of better programmers if people used python over php).
homosaur 14y ago
Are static site generators the new "hello world?"
- camus 14y ago
  yeah ! , why not ? it's a cool thing to code imho.
  - zobzu 14y ago
    Good point actually. It's simple and easy too.
rdl 14y ago
How would you add comments to something like this, if you wanted to have comments for some (probably idiotic and ill thought out, based on most blog comments) reason? Would you be able to embed disqus or something?
- JasonFruit 14y ago
  There are HTML templates in the `press` directory; you could easily add Disqus comments to post.html.
- an00na 14y ago
  It is easy to add Disqus. In fact, I tried using it and there are some commented-out Disqus css in default.css. I disabled it because I really don't need comment right now.
0x0 14y ago
So to use dropbox for publishing, the author recommends registering two accounts on dropbox.com. Would that carry a risk of account termination? Sounds like an easy way to game the free space for invites bonus.
sfard 14y ago
For those interested in a not-self-hosted option, I built http://throwww.com http://throwww.com Growing user base, very simple, markdown-based (includes video markdown), includes RSS & Comments <end self promotion>
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
nikcub 14y ago
There are dozens of such projects now, all of them 1 or 2% different from the others, little differences that would be more suitable as plugins or extensions to a defacto static generator (Jekyll). Instead we get a mass duplication of effort into implementing essentially the same thing, a common problem with open source projects. What is really required is a dead-simple static generator, the equivalent to what Wordpress and Movable Type did for the old style of blogging. A simple app that ordinary computer users can plug their FTP or S3 details into and then publish.
- pekk 14y ago
  Why don't you write the dead-simple static generator. Then we can observe that it is only 2% different from the others and throw it on the pile :)
  - nikcub 14y ago
    I tried: https://github.com/nikcub/floyd https://github.com/nikcub/floyd I had a bunch of friends and family members who needed simple static sites so I generated it for them (this was before Jekyll). I could use it myself, but I could never get them to do the updates themselves from their own machines. Once Jekyll and the rest came out, I switched my own use over and switched everybody else over to Weebly, and then didn't bother continuing work on Floyd and just let it idle (I pushed it up to GitHub). Each time one of these projects is released I scan through them and try them out to see if there is any new idea to pick up on. It then occurred to me that a real innovation in this space is a lot of work and trial+error. For technical people, you have Jekyll, Hyde, etc. For non-technical people you don't really have anything at the moment. I think a project with a web interface that generates files would be interesting, or having a folder of text files (or Word, Pages etc. documents) that are then generated and uploaded by double-clicking on an icon. I know there are a bunch of apps in the Mac AppStore in this space, but I haven't tried any of them - so it is possible that this solution already exists. I am not so in love with the idea that I would drop everything else right now to work on it. Edit: I realize my original comment might offend OP but I didn't intend it to be that way, there are only so many ways you can say "work on expanding the potential uses rather than reimplementing etc." without it sounding dickish
ricefield 14y ago
This reminds me a lot of scriptogr.am Both use dropbox, markdown. The difference is that scriptogram doesn't run from your localhost and its not a static site. Still, there are a lot of similarities
imikay 14y ago
Remind me of Alexis Sellier's awesome micro blog engine toto(https://github.com/cloudhead/toto https://github.com/cloudhead/toto), created 3 years ago.
anthemcg 14y ago
Seems like another similar system to Jekyll, et al. I don't think many heavily technical people understand how alienating this kind of approach is to the average user. Wordpress is popular because its understandable, installation is done in such a way that its fairly easy and its powerful enough. Static generation blogs may seem simple to us but to most people who want to blog they seem ridiculously complicated.
zobzu 14y ago
Major issue in the static blog: There no comments, and if you want comments, they're not owned by you. I read there's some local comment servers being written (ie you cleanly separate the blog static content and the dynamic comments), but i've yet to see a "mainstream one that just works" (tm).
- stevekemp 14y ago
  I wrote chronicle which handles this via a CGI. Comments are dumped into text-files and they are included in the rebuild. That means there is a lag and a rebuild needed to publish them, but it works for me & my blog: http://blog.steve.org.uk/ http://blog.steve.org.uk/
- roberto 14y ago
  I'm writing my own blog engine after Posterous' announcement. The way it works is that I create a static site which is upload somewhere, and it also publishes the post on Facebook and Twitter. Discussion happens there, on the social networks, and on the next build the comments are downloaded and stored in static files. This way when Facebook dies all the discussions will remain on the static site -- for good or bad. :-P
- sdoering 14y ago
  If you are a Ruby person, you could go with Juvia: https://github.com/phusion/juvia https://github.com/phusion/juvia I never used it though, as I decided against comments (and am using other tools now).
- an00na 14y ago
  It's easy to add Disqus. But if you think you don't own comments in Disqus, it is a problem.
meerita 14y ago
I blog since 2000. I used almost all blogging platforms. Now I'm switching to Jekyll from Wordpress. Most of the blogging tools, specially those with mySQL, have an unlimited growth of features. Instead becoming limited, and scalable with plugins they start to become slower as bigger in code to do simply blogging. These tools derivate to website making tools, wich is really odd. I love Jekyll. I'm designer and I didn't had too much trouble to switch from wordpress to something local on my machine and deploy it to my own server. Today is the first day I will be completely off from Wordpress.
lucb1e 14y ago
> Comments are also just ego feeders I hate when I can't comment on a blog, like right now I can't remark that comments are useful. And I can't comment that RSS is useful, and that I used it a lot in Firefox (not anymore in Chrome now, Google Reader sucks).
- an00na 14y ago
  Of course you can, here, and I see them:) If you want comments, it is easy to add Disqus. RSS is something I'll consider later.
polm23 14y ago
So is "Those who do not remember blosxom are doomed to repeat it" a cliche yet?
battlebee 14y ago
Newbie programmer here. How hard would it be to add RSS to this? It could be an interesting project to help me learn Python.

89 points by an00na 14y ago

unavoidable 14y ago

I wonder if the author knows that "Letterpress" is a rather popular iOS game.

pervycreeper 14y ago
Does it matter?
- joshschreuder 14y ago
  Not overly so, but it does make it hard to be discovered or searched for, especially with the months of links and reviews for the iOS game boosting it in search engines.
- Codhisattva 14y ago
  It'll matter when the blog guy wants an iOS app and has to call it "LP MAKER PLUS" or something dumb.
- michaelbuckbee 14y ago
  Setting aside any legal issues, it just seems odd and probably not in the OPs best interest to have a name that is so strongly associated with an extremely popular mobile game.
- petercooper 14y ago
  Pointless trivia: In the UK, throughout the 80s and 90s there was both a (usually lemon) kitchen cleaner and a lemon juice called Jif. It didn't seem to cause any problems, although the kitchen cleaner became Cif for unrelated reasons.
kmf 14y ago
My guess is that if there's a battle of wills that's going to occur, the game will win. It's easier to change a name on a web project than an iOS game. There's months of advertisement that've gone in to Loren's Letterpress at this point.

benrhughes 14y ago

Funnily enough, I just wrote something similar in node[1] and one of my mates has just written one in Go too. Great minds, or something :-) [1]: https://github.com/benrhughes/crashdown https://github.com/benrhughes/crashdown

lhnn 14y ago
Would you mind linking to your friend's implementation in Golang? I'm learning the language and want to see how he did it.
- benrhughes 14y ago
  Sure: http://paulsamways.com/projects/upublish http://paulsamways.com/projects/upublish

revgeeky 14y ago

Built my own a few months back in node for publishing using git to Heroku. Markdown flavored micro blogging is hip!

hendry 14y ago

That's not minimal. 18LOC is minimal https://github.com/kaihendry/sg-hackandtell/blob/master/Makefile https://github.com/kaihendry/sg-hackandtell/blob/master/Make...

qznc 14y ago
Use pandoc instead of markdown (the executable), then it gets even smaller. ;)

jacques_chester 14y ago

It's worth remembering that 99.999% of ordinary users will never switch to a static generation blog system, no matter how carefully it is explained. The problem really is that somebody has to pay the piper. I'm going to create a new rule. Chester's First Law: Essential complexity in the problem domain is a conserved quantity. Either your system absorbs and obscures it; or you push it back on the user somehow. Even within a system you can push it around to different places, but it never goes away. Consider: the problem domain for a blogging system is take stuff from an author and produce HTML for readers. Movable Type used to "build" a whole site at a time. Wordpress does it per-view unless you use caching. Wordpress won inter alia because the cost of the complexity was pushed from the authors to the readers -- and it's authors who pick the blogging engine. Static site generators are like Movable Type, in that they take the essential complexity that used to be on the readers and push it back to the author. A more complex system would strike a balance by proactively generating new cached output based on POSTs, not GETs. That would push both halves of the essential complexity into the system itself, away from both authors and readers. At all times, the sum of essential complexity has been conserved.

clicks 14y ago
The author's choice is still subject to fads, to what's in vogue, to the zeitgeist. And as of late, the static generation fervor has been getting stronger.
camus 14y ago
Wordpress is successfull because it is easy to install and hosting is cheap. Furthermore the basic wordpress set has very little capabilities. (but they are 100% blogger oriented) However wordpress is a pain to customize and extend, i always found drupal was easier to customize for non developpers ( you have to mess with php pretty fast with wordpress ). Drupal is on the contrary a little more complicated to setup , but the basic set up is more powerfull than wordpress ( and the plugin system is better ). That's why i dont think non php scripts can be popular to non programmers. you can just drop some python or some ruby on a webserver and expect it to work just like php does, And few shared hosting providers support mod_python or stuff like that ( which is the shame because i see no reason why mod_python is worse than mod_php and we would have a whole generation of better programmers if people used python over php).

homosaur 14y ago

Are static site generators the new "hello world?"

camus 14y ago
yeah ! , why not ? it's a cool thing to code imho.
- zobzu 14y ago
  Good point actually. It's simple and easy too.

rdl 14y ago

How would you add comments to something like this, if you wanted to have comments for some (probably idiotic and ill thought out, based on most blog comments) reason? Would you be able to embed disqus or something?

JasonFruit 14y ago
There are HTML templates in the `press` directory; you could easily add Disqus comments to post.html.
an00na 14y ago
It is easy to add Disqus. In fact, I tried using it and there are some commented-out Disqus css in default.css. I disabled it because I really don't need comment right now.

0x0 14y ago

So to use dropbox for publishing, the author recommends registering two accounts on dropbox.com. Would that carry a risk of account termination? Sounds like an easy way to game the free space for invites bonus.

sfard 14y ago

For those interested in a not-self-hosted option, I built http://throwww.com http://throwww.com Growing user base, very simple, markdown-based (includes video markdown), includes RSS & Comments <end self promotion>

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

nikcub 14y ago

There are dozens of such projects now, all of them 1 or 2% different from the others, little differences that would be more suitable as plugins or extensions to a defacto static generator (Jekyll). Instead we get a mass duplication of effort into implementing essentially the same thing, a common problem with open source projects. What is really required is a dead-simple static generator, the equivalent to what Wordpress and Movable Type did for the old style of blogging. A simple app that ordinary computer users can plug their FTP or S3 details into and then publish.

pekk 14y ago
Why don't you write the dead-simple static generator. Then we can observe that it is only 2% different from the others and throw it on the pile :)
- nikcub 14y ago
  I tried: https://github.com/nikcub/floyd https://github.com/nikcub/floyd I had a bunch of friends and family members who needed simple static sites so I generated it for them (this was before Jekyll). I could use it myself, but I could never get them to do the updates themselves from their own machines. Once Jekyll and the rest came out, I switched my own use over and switched everybody else over to Weebly, and then didn't bother continuing work on Floyd and just let it idle (I pushed it up to GitHub). Each time one of these projects is released I scan through them and try them out to see if there is any new idea to pick up on. It then occurred to me that a real innovation in this space is a lot of work and trial+error. For technical people, you have Jekyll, Hyde, etc. For non-technical people you don't really have anything at the moment. I think a project with a web interface that generates files would be interesting, or having a folder of text files (or Word, Pages etc. documents) that are then generated and uploaded by double-clicking on an icon. I know there are a bunch of apps in the Mac AppStore in this space, but I haven't tried any of them - so it is possible that this solution already exists. I am not so in love with the idea that I would drop everything else right now to work on it. Edit: I realize my original comment might offend OP but I didn't intend it to be that way, there are only so many ways you can say "work on expanding the potential uses rather than reimplementing etc." without it sounding dickish

ricefield 14y ago

This reminds me a lot of scriptogr.am Both use dropbox, markdown. The difference is that scriptogram doesn't run from your localhost and its not a static site. Still, there are a lot of similarities

imikay 14y ago

Remind me of Alexis Sellier's awesome micro blog engine toto(https://github.com/cloudhead/toto https://github.com/cloudhead/toto), created 3 years ago.

anthemcg 14y ago

Seems like another similar system to Jekyll, et al. I don't think many heavily technical people understand how alienating this kind of approach is to the average user. Wordpress is popular because its understandable, installation is done in such a way that its fairly easy and its powerful enough. Static generation blogs may seem simple to us but to most people who want to blog they seem ridiculously complicated.

zobzu 14y ago

Major issue in the static blog: There no comments, and if you want comments, they're not owned by you. I read there's some local comment servers being written (ie you cleanly separate the blog static content and the dynamic comments), but i've yet to see a "mainstream one that just works" (tm).

stevekemp 14y ago
I wrote chronicle which handles this via a CGI. Comments are dumped into text-files and they are included in the rebuild. That means there is a lag and a rebuild needed to publish them, but it works for me & my blog: http://blog.steve.org.uk/ http://blog.steve.org.uk/
roberto 14y ago
I'm writing my own blog engine after Posterous' announcement. The way it works is that I create a static site which is upload somewhere, and it also publishes the post on Facebook and Twitter. Discussion happens there, on the social networks, and on the next build the comments are downloaded and stored in static files. This way when Facebook dies all the discussions will remain on the static site -- for good or bad. :-P
sdoering 14y ago
If you are a Ruby person, you could go with Juvia: https://github.com/phusion/juvia https://github.com/phusion/juvia I never used it though, as I decided against comments (and am using other tools now).
an00na 14y ago
It's easy to add Disqus. But if you think you don't own comments in Disqus, it is a problem.

meerita 14y ago

I blog since 2000. I used almost all blogging platforms. Now I'm switching to Jekyll from Wordpress. Most of the blogging tools, specially those with mySQL, have an unlimited growth of features. Instead becoming limited, and scalable with plugins they start to become slower as bigger in code to do simply blogging. These tools derivate to website making tools, wich is really odd. I love Jekyll. I'm designer and I didn't had too much trouble to switch from wordpress to something local on my machine and deploy it to my own server. Today is the first day I will be completely off from Wordpress.

lucb1e 14y ago

> Comments are also just ego feeders I hate when I can't comment on a blog, like right now I can't remark that comments are useful. And I can't comment that RSS is useful, and that I used it a lot in Firefox (not anymore in Chrome now, Google Reader sucks).

an00na 14y ago
Of course you can, here, and I see them:) If you want comments, it is easy to add Disqus. RSS is something I'll consider later.

polm23 14y ago

So is "Those who do not remember blosxom are doomed to repeat it" a cliche yet?

battlebee 14y ago

Newbie programmer here. How hard would it be to add RSS to this? It could be an interesting project to help me learn Python.