Show HN: Automatically turn GitHub issues into blog posts
ebarnouflant.com
ebarnouflant.com
I guess part of my confusion is that you get a very similar preview experience directly in the repository if you add/edit a file from the GitHub.com interface. I've been using this as my "CMS" for a while and have been fairly happy with it. This works well for me as I've not had a problem sticking to the vanilla Jekyll and GitHub's supported plugin list, allowing GitHub to build my blog for me on commit and thus allowing me to commit directly from GitHub.com when I wish to. (I think that maybe some of the tools like Octopress have obfuscated the fact that vanilla Jekyll (and GitHub supported plugins) is really all you need for a decent blog platform...)
I think the only thing missing is the "drag an image into the file" feature and I personally haven't needed that, but then I don't often include images in my blog posts and when I do they are often already in a sharing service like OneDrive or Flickr.
Sometime ago I did almost exactly the same thing with Trello[1], but the thing grew enough to motivate me to overcome the inevitable latency problems and other limitations that arised from the fact that I was fetching all needed data from Trello at each request, and so it became a more interesting product. The idea of never asking the user to leave the Trello interface remains, however, because Trello's interface is what has made it so great[3], the same applies to GitHub.
In fact, I feel a bit sad every time someone creates a new UI from ground-up just to do something a lot of other products already do with better UIs (from years of improvements and hard work)[2]. Perhaps there could be more DRY in these areas.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8946847
[2]: https://websitesfortrello.com
[3]: http://fiatjaf.alhur.es/programming/handling-support-emails-...
Until those products change somehow, because their purpose is not the same as yours.
I'm all for simplifying, automating, reducing double-work, etc, but I prefer to do it in a way that I know is going to be reliable and zero risk to the project/company.
For example, using an existing LDAP-compatible Directory Service to provide SSH(Shell,Git,Mercurial,SFTP)/DB/WebApp authentication and authorisation is an amazing simplifier for both uses and admins - one account, one password to worry about when someone joins, when someone leaves, when someone needs extra permissions.
A number of services could be "centralised" the same way using something like GitHub or Google Apps or what have you as the central store. But then your services are all dependent on that external system, and frankly that's a risk I'm not happy to take.
or it takes some time?