Show HN: Simple note-taking and blogging | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Simple note-taking and blogging

notepin.co

57 pointsokozzie17 comments

First impression was that it's not immediately clear or intuitive where I was supposed to type my note.

"Everything you type here will save automatically." Where is here?

The cursor does not default to the text area. So you when you click to the "write" page and start typing, nothing happens. There is no border around this mystery writing text box, just blank white space that flows into the edges of the page.

The formatting tools box at the top was appearing then disappearing seemingly randomly. Until I realized it's only available when you highlight the text, then disappears when nothing is highlighted and is then covered/replaced by a link to the home page. Why not just show the formatting at all times? If someone never highlights the text, or does it quickly, they might not even know they have the ability to format the text.

I think all of these can easily be adapted/iterated (if these views are encountered by not just me). Overall it's a very nice product.

Thanks for sharing!

> Where is here?

Well, click on "here" to find out, no? There are some UX issues, but this is not one of them.

> Well, click on "here" to find out, no?

No. I had the same problem. If it's meant to be a simple note taking app, it's a fair expectation that you can "just type," or that you are "here" without taking an action on your own. With the current UX, it's a note-viewing app, not a note-taking app.

I actually agree with gp. The common UI these days is to have a clearly outlined place to type with placeholder text in a lighter font. It's simple to make the change and I think OP should. Nice product though.

Sorry but it is REALLY a pain to evaluate : whatever i click, i get that upgrade advertisment. I only can write and post pages. Definitly doesn't worth https://write.as which is (seems ?) far far far better.

What if I blog using your non-premium features (essentially as a wiki, since it's open to public), and then someone can come and lock this wiki buy paying $9 a year and putting a password.

I think this is a great idea, essentially by making this product, you made two, one can create a blog or a public wiki. Except the problem is now anyone can turn the public wiki into their private blog by paying $9. I wish I could register the name, but still had to pay $9 to restrict edit/write features to myself.

just fyi you (mis)attribute the referral to producthunt for clicking the HN link, that might mess with your traffic analytics a bit

I really love this and would want to use it. However, how do I make sure your service would be around years from now? Any tips for people in the same boat as me who hesitate to put in a lot of efforts in something if there is a risk that it could be all for nothing?

This is why people like Stallman warn about the cloud, at the extreme end of things. But usually these services offer a way to back up your data, at the very latest close to whenever it is time to finally close up shop. :-) I personally use Pastebin.com a lot and have a lifetime account there, but any information that's really important I immediately back up. For me it's important that if I can't make backups or export the data, at least it's in e.g. plain text so I can get my data out without losing anything.

I have gone back to using LibreOffice quite a bit, too, in lieu of cloud word processors. I use the cloud stuff when I'm not working on mission-critical data.

Essentially, the more nuanced you can be about what you'll post where, the better your results will be. If you have to pick the One True Software, you're screwed one way or the other.

If you find there’s a price tag in any service that you want to use, pay for it! Also, share what you’re doing to other people and encourage them to do the same.

Of course if you’re the only one that pays, that wouldn’t be meaningful. But if it becomes the culture, then it would be another story.

This is one of the reasons I adore Tiddlywiki (https://tiddlywiki.com/). It's designed to be self-hosted.

You obviously can't ensure that his service is around in years from now. So your comment reads like a passive-aggresive way of saying that "you are a small guy, I don't think you'll be around for long, so it is essentially useless." Which is a valid point, it just needs not be veiled behind a rhetorical question.

OMG. It's not passive agressive. To me it seemed like it is genuine question and comment author hoped somebody has solution.

This is exactly the reason why I fear to use many new services these days, setting up and putting in all the efforts and time to get started and after a few months the service is discontinued. I have seen a lot of product links going 404 or blank pages on product hunt.

Is it open source?

this is fun. many moons ago i created something similar: https://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/10/12/instablogg-lets-you-c...

i got a mountain of spam in it

what's the tech stack used to build this?

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