[HN Gopher] Prose.sh - A blog platform for hackers
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Prose.sh - A blog platform for hackers
Author : jstanley
Score : 226 points
Date : 2022-07-17 16:08 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (prose.sh)
(TXT) w3m dump (prose.sh)
| qudat wrote:
| Hey all! Thanks to everyone for checking our prose!
|
| We just launched support for custom domains and plan to add image
| hosting shortly.
|
| We also have two sibling services that leverage the same
| technology:
|
| - https://lists.sh -- microblog for lists
|
| - https://pastes.sh -- pastebin
|
| Also happy to answer any questions!
| ezekg wrote:
| How does the SSH UI work? I thought that was pretty neat and a
| good way to give off a hacker vibe right off the bat.
| birktj wrote:
| It seems like they are using [1] Wish [2], a library for "SSH
| apps"
|
| [1]: https://git.sr.ht/~erock/prose.sh/tree/main/item/cmd/ssh
| /mai... [2]: https://github.com/charmbracelet/wish
| ezekg wrote:
| I didn't know this was open source! Thanks.
| dmix wrote:
| That's great. Why not combine the three services into one? I'd
| like to sometimes post lists and pastebins on my blog? It'd be
| easier to login to one ssh and have a central website.
|
| Unless I missed something.
| qudat wrote:
| Thanks for engaging! Right now we are experimenting with
| different services and seeing what sticks. We have lofty
| ideas of combining everything into one service or at least a
| service that aggregates them. We will chat about this idea in
| #pico.sh on libera so feel free to join the convo!
| carapace wrote:
| First, congratulations, this seems really cool. :)
|
| My question is, how are you going to deal with spam and,
| y'know, bad stuff? Related to that, how do you contact users
| without an email address? (I know it's possible, like you could
| send a custom banner, I'm curious about how you do it.)
| qudat wrote:
| Spam and bad stuff: we are seeing if it'll ever get to the
| scale that it'll be an issue. Our hunch is since you have to
| use terminal tools to publish that it'll weed out a lot of
| nefarious activity.
|
| Contacting users: this is a very interesting limitation that
| we want to see how far we can take it. Right now we have no
| way of contacting users and see that as a feature.
|
| Having said that we have an official blog
| (https://hey.prose.sh) with an RSS feed to notify users of
| updates.
| ducktective wrote:
| >since you have to use terminal tools to publish that it'll
| weed out a lot of nefarious activity.
|
| Meanwhile: _script kiddie copy-pasting noises_
| pwillia7 wrote:
| I just got something setup pretty simple with Hugo, Netlify,
| GoogleDrive and a simple action. It's still a little much to be
| super accessible especially since you need to fuss over markdown
| editor settings for pasting images and I only know of Typora that
| does this well, but it's pretty manageable.
|
| That is my vision -- Something nice and simple to use like
| markdown in a Gdrive folder, flexibility and theme niceness of
| Hugo and full automation without ever needing to get into a
| terminal or repo unless you're coding.
|
| Last time I tried to do this with org mode but since decided,
| while I learned a lot of takeaways and had a good experience, org
| mode isn't something I want to use every day, or even emacs for
| that matter.
| kaashif wrote:
| Maybe this doesn't make any sense, but when I write a blog post,
| I don't necessarily want lots of people to read it. My blog is
| primarily for me, the public nature of it just forces me to think
| about what I'm writing a bit more, and try to articulate my
| thoughts better.
|
| It seems that the main reason you'd post to a "blog platform"
| rather than just your own website or some GitHub pages thing is
| to get more people to read it, so I've never really been
| attracted to any of these things.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Don't have much to say about this other than that it's nice that
| it's just plain old HTML+CSS.
|
| However, I get white flashes of content every three or four times
| I navigate this website despite the CSS being downloaded just
| fine. Anyone have an idea why my browser won't cache the CSS?
| layer8 wrote:
| Hopefully they'll be adding a light theme and _prefers-color-
| scheme_ support.
| mike-cardwell wrote:
| I selected username www and it told me I would find my blog at
| https://www.prose.sh. Yet, I went to that URL, and found some
| other random persons content. Please remove that other persons
| content so I can display mine.
| qudat wrote:
| Great catch! We need to add this to the deny list. Thanks for
| your feedback!
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Cmon dude
| webwanderings wrote:
| What's the deal with copycats and similarities? This looks like a
| copy of bearblog.dev and one cannot tell who has copied whom. Is
| there anything on the Internet that is trustworthy anymore?
| metadat wrote:
| Agreed, seeing both atop the frontpage simultaneously is
| confusing. An enlightening explanation for the rest of us would
| be great.
|
| For reference, here is the "Bear Blog" thread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32127363
| kup0 wrote:
| Yes, how dare one site inspire another to make something
| similar. Not sure how that automatically makes it
| untrustworthy... would rather have _more_ players in the
| minimal blog space than only one or two
| nkrisc wrote:
| You can create your own versions of things that other people
| have already made. Consult local law for limitations.
| protonbob wrote:
| I think this is a great trend. Why have only one website doing
| it?
| alexwennerberg wrote:
| These are open source apps, copycats are great and should be
| encouraged. That's the nature of open source!
| qudat wrote:
| Hi! Co-creator of prose.sh. This blog was heavily inspired by
| bear. We have acknowledgements at the bottom of this page:
| https://prose.sh/ops
| gigatexal wrote:
| This looks dope. I live at the command line and ssh is secure
| and good. Question on pricing. Because if I invest time in
| this I'd like to know it will be around. Sure I'll have the
| data and can push to anything else but it's still nice to
| know that this will be paid and reasonably around for years
| to come.
| qudat wrote:
| We have heard this a couple of times and read you loud and
| clear. We would price the blog to pay for its costs. Join
| #pico.sh on libera or sub to https://hey.prose.sh to get
| updates
| na85 wrote:
| Back in the 90s we considered the ability to "View Source" an
| indispensable tool not just for learning but also for keeping
| the spirit of the early web alive.
|
| If your design is so precious to you, you can use flash or DRM
| or something similar so nobody can copy your design quite as
| easily, but this is a disappointing attitude to see.
| holler wrote:
| Ah yes, reminds me of this video "everything is a remix":
| https://vimeo.com/563833916
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Nobody owns ideas or designs
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| A lot of people (especially software devs) seem to have zero
| ethical quandaries over completely ripping off other people's
| designs, mechanics or ideas without even so much as giving
| attribution to the original source that directly inspired them.
|
| I feel like these are the same people that are absolutely
| losing their shit over something like github copilot though.
| Cognitive dissonance is fun.
|
| Fortunately, prose is doing the right thing by giving credit
| where credit is due. Sadly this is typically the exception
| rather than the rule.
| brad0 wrote:
| What's the value of this over GitHub Pages?
| nephanth wrote:
| Nice TUI it seems
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Might want to rethink the name, as the tool seems very similar to
| https://prose.io/
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ushakov wrote:
| how will you keep that thing afloat?
|
| do you plan making money?
| jll29 wrote:
| 2 bug reports:
|
| * dashes in file names (that become blog post titles) are
| elminated! ( proof: https://leidner.prose.sh/welcome-2022-07-17 )
|
| * my blog's first post has a wrong date ("01 Jan, 0001"; proof:
| https://leidner.prose.sh/ )
| blacklight wrote:
| I've checked this out with genuine interest because I've been
| looking for pure text file, Markdown-based blogging platform for
| a while.
|
| I built Madblog some months ago
| (https://git.platypush.tech/blacklight/madblog) to fill that gap.
| Madblog has a lot of the features I wanted (including RSS feeds,
| git versioning for the static files, a good looking index and
| LaTeX support), all while being purely staticly served with zero
| JavaScript. But now I feel the need for some more meaningful user
| interactions - adding comments on articles, preferably through
| Fediverse/OpenID login instead of using Disqus or other bloated
| stuff. But I don't feel like going down that rabbit hole
| implementation.
|
| Is there any source code for prose.sh by the way? Can it be self-
| hosted?
| eikenberry wrote:
| Link is at the bottom. https://git.sr.ht/~erock/prose.sh
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| Honest question: why not Gemini and Gemtext support?
| qudat wrote:
| One of our sibling services (https://lists.sh) has support for
| Gemini. Because we are targeting people that would otherwise
| use something like Hugo, we wanted to offer rich markdown
| support.
|
| Converting GitHub flavored markdown to Gemini is work and we
| aren't sure if the juice is worth the squeeze. If enough people
| feel otherwise I'd be happy to add it to the roadmap.
| layer8 wrote:
| Easier interoperability, more available tooling, less
| complexity by supporting only one format that is already wide-
| spread.
| FirstLvR wrote:
| Gemini are liars, don't trust
| asymmetric wrote:
| Honest question: why Gemini and Gemtext support over Markdown?
| emptysongglass wrote:
| There's https://smol.pub for that!
| user00012-ab wrote:
| I click on "discover some interesting posts" and none of them
| were interesting; same issue I have with most everything on
| reddit, all the posts are "I POSTED!"
|
| The only reason I bring this up is because it is a "Platform for
| Hackers" but none of the posts really reflect anything like that.
| Just seems like another new site where people post the "I'm on
| this site now, and setup a default page" and then it never really
| goes beyond that.
|
| There was some pub/bar themed Gemini site awhile back, and every
| new post was some variation of being in a virtual pub; again,
| nothing interesting and I moved on.
| [deleted]
| jstanley wrote:
| That's the majority of everyone's first blog posts ever though.
| It's nothing wrong with this platform, that's just what
| people's first blog posts look like.
|
| Most people write 1 blog post, saying they have a blog, and
| then never write any more. That's fine.
|
| Any new blogging platform is going to first attract users who
| are new to blogging: everyone who is _not_ new to blogging
| already has their blog set up, so unless they 're particularly
| unhappy with it there is no reason for them to use a new
| blogging platform.
| user00012-ab wrote:
| It was mostly an "Old man yells at cloud" post. I'm always
| excited about small communities online, since in theory they
| aren't pandering to the lowest common denominator, so there
| is a chance they could have more specific and interesting
| content, like back in the day when magazines could target a
| specific group of people and have in depth articles on tech,
| instead of today where they have to write for the lowest
| common denominator to reach the most people for ads.
| layer8 wrote:
| The blogs https://erock.prose.sh/ and https://ben.prose.sh/ do
| have substantial content. Maybe give it some time?
| user00012-ab wrote:
| That's good to know, ""discover some interesting posts"
| should be a curated list of things like that to get people in
| the door.
| layer8 wrote:
| Well, it's obvious that it's just linking to the "recent
| posts" page and that you're supposed to discover for
| yourself what you find interesting.
| user00012-ab wrote:
| So there is a new content platform on hacker news almost
| weekly if not more. I doubt most people are going to sort
| through a ton of "my first posts" posts on each new
| platform to look for something interesting.
| elashri wrote:
| I always admired these kind of projects but unfortunately having
| a blog without JS means no LaTeX.
| detaro wrote:
| You can run LaTeX-to-HTML/SVG/... server-side too.
| folmar wrote:
| Tex4ht makes for a nice LaTeX to HTML renderer, use as static
| generator and JS is a non-issue.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Kudos. How about a voting mechanism so that quality rises to the
| top?
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| It is that sort of thing that ruins the internet
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| You mean like getting on page 1 of HN?
| nope96 wrote:
| like https://everything2.com/ ?
| mholt wrote:
| I see something about using Caddy in the repo. Nice! That's a
| great solution for custom domain TLS.
| antoniomika wrote:
| Thanks for Caddy :)
|
| I use certmagic for a different project, but saw on_demand_tls
| with the ask feature and knew it was a good fit!
| woodruffw wrote:
| This is a cool idea (I love seeing clever uses of SSH, and this
| is definitely one of them), but I wonder who the intended
| audience is: it's not complete novices or the non-technical, and
| it's presumably not people like me (who already use an SSG +
| rsync over SSH to accomplish the same thing on their own).
| unsafecast wrote:
| It's turnkey blogging but without the BS.
|
| There's blogger, and wordpress(.com), and a lot more, but I
| (and presumably you and OP) would take anything over those
| types of platforms.
|
| This fills the gap between 'do your own thing' and 'just use
| wordpress'.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Makes sense, thanks for the explanation.
| jll29 wrote:
| Very neat, from a technical perspective. I hope you don't
| have business aspirations, since from a business point of
| view, key creation may throw off 99% of potential user
| volume, so this limits your audience and growth.
|
| Out of curiosity, was this developed as an exercise in
| procrastination while preparing for a pharmacology exam?
| woodruffw wrote:
| I'm not the creator, so maybe this response was on the
| wrong comment?
|
| (I don't think key creation throws off adoption by
| developers, who are clearly the target audience. I just
| didn't understand _which_ subset of developers was being
| targeted.)
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-07-17 23:00 UTC)