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Ask HN: Building a blog engine
I recently joined a local organization that aims to raise awareness about UX among developers, designer, etc. and we could use a blog to share some info.
I know that there are already a lot of blog engines out there but I haven't found any that really got me exited and I'm a web developer so I'd like to build one and make it Open Source.
The question is, what features (beyond blog basics) would you like or do you think that would make a really good and useful blog?
A fellow member brought up that it'd be nice to provide it as a service for those non tech-savvy (journalists, small businesses, entrepreneurs and bloggers in general) at a much lower price than a hosting service and without the burden of setting up a server.
Before diving in I'd like to get a rough idea of whether we'll be able to cover our costs or not. Also keep in mind that I'd prefer to keep everything Open Source, no paid service with more features.
So, the following questions would be what's required for you to be willing to pay for it (features, design, etc.) and up to what price would it be a no-brainer for you to pay for a service with all those features.
Every opinion is welcomed and thanks to those who take the time to reply or upvote.
- Mz 11y agobut I haven't found any that really got me exited I am reasonably content with BlogSpot. Others seem happy with WordPress. If you aren't excited, I suggest you start with listing what YOU want, code up an MVP and then maybe submit it to HN under Show instead of Ask.
- littlegift 11y agoI see your point. I opted to ask early and get feedback from people outside the project to avoid focusing too much on my own opinions. Showing my own design can condition people to think only in terms of it (what to add, change or remove from it) instead of focusing on what they'd really love to have in a blog but i'll consider submitting it under "Show HN" in a later stage of development. Thanks for sharing!
- suprjami 11y agoMarkdown editing. I would love a blog with an editor like Dillinger.io
- littlegift 11y agoThat's great feedback. I was considering Markdown but I wasn't sure if I should add a WYISWG editor or make users write in plain Markdown. I can start with this approach and add the editor later if users ask for it. Thanks!
- dhogan 11y agohave you tried Ghost? https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/
- littlegift 11y agoSo apparently Ghost uses Dillinger... or at least they are really similar.
- dhogan 11y agoJust thought that I'd throw this out there because I think Ghost is pretty cool. https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/ It's open source and seems to be somewhere along the lines of what you are hoping to create. If you want to build your own, that's awesome, go for it. But, perhaps consider contributing to this project for things you want to add that it doesn't already have.
- littlegift 11y agoGhost is actually really nice! For the moment I still would like to give it a shot at building one to improve some skills with Meteor, but I'll certainly look into Ghost for inspiration. Thanks!
- jbrooksuk 11y agoI'm currently building a new CMS that is focused around an API. The idea is that data is stored in an agnostic way, for example, the CMS doesn't know nor care that you're storing a page of hats, nor would it know if you started selling hats and ties. You model your data, create a document from said model, then you can place it into a collection of "hats", "ties", whatever.
- littlegift 11y agoYou mean that users (those who install the software) would create documents to model their own data, something in the line of Rails migrations?