Show HN: Simple Blogging Platform – QuickPublisher | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Simple Blogging Platform – QuickPublisher

quickpublisher.online

> By default, your blog gets published on a .quickpublisher.online sub domain.

Please be careful: don't let users publish on your domain or even a subdomain of your business domain. If they post something someone don't like you risk that your email and statis page and everything goes down because someone asks your DNS provider to take you offline.

Just buy another domain: quickpublisher.<whatever> and use that for user generated content.

Thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to implement it

Consider using something like this:

https://github.com/dsignr/disallowed-usernames

Disclaimer: I'm the author

You're a life saver! Thank you! This makes it easier to implement in my platform.

Lol that's the least of the concerns.

If you allow customers to publish on subdomain, let's say example.quickpublisher.online, the customer site will receive all cookies from the top domain quickpublisher.online (read: user sessions), this allows to trivially steal user accounts from other customers visiting the site, then take over their resources or credit cards (assuming there is some payments attached to the account).

TLDR; If you're a customer, go shutdown your account quick before it's stolen. This product is a security disaster that should never have been shipped like that.

Wordpress.com does this. Are those sites at risk too?

Here I use wildcards. The subdomains are not created on my domain.

Good question!

You will see that you are logged in as yourself if you access any wordpress.com website, your session is shared with all blogs. It allows you to post comments as yourself without captcha for example.

Historically wordpress controls the entire platform. It notably doesn't allow users to post raw HTML or any javascript, or load any wordpress plugins. There is only a basic text editor to write blog articles. As a customer you wouldn't be able to intercept cookies because you don't have any control on your site (you can't even load javascript for google or amazon ads which is super annoying).

They've added some plugin support in the past year and few other things, so this might have opened some unnoticed loopholes. Notwithstanding any novelty, wordpress is locked really tight and designed with this in mind, it's safe.

Looks interesting.

However, competing with write.as on being the simplest blogging platform is hard (and maybe not something you should try either, they are extremely close to too simple even for my very basic needs.)

I didn't remember the name, but when I saw the title of this post I was expecting something like write.as. Start typing and hit a button.

Hi There. I understand.. I am currently working on adding more features to the platform like Trending posts, etc.. For now its basic. What makes it unique is its simplicity.

Hi everyone. Apologies for the landing page problems. I have just updated the site with changes requested, improved the grammar and added more information. Thank you for the constructive feedback

The demo blog seems to be really-really slow. Pages load in seconds.

It's on the top page of HN, so it's probably the hug of death.

I like the fact that some loading-related UX cues are in place (e.g. a spinner between page transitions).

Hi There Thanks.. That's why I added the spinner loader. Currently we are experiencing high traffic. So I am working on load-balancing. Apologies for the time lag

Put your static assets on a CDN to reduce hits on your web server and use the CPU for processing instead.

Thanks for the tip. I'll get that sorted out promptly.

I was a bit confused by the landing page, I tried to click on the images. Also,for me the blog loads very slow, but could just be HN traffic.

I am currently using my own stupidly simple "blogging" platform, which is just a PHP function to render markdown files: https://github.com/Cristy94/markdown-blog

If I were to switch to your platform, I am a bit confused about:

* How editing/publishing of a post works (what is the editor)?

* How much traffic it can handle?

* Can I use my own domain?

* Can I integrate it my existing site?

* Does it have good SEO (keywords, meta descriptions, og: images, rich snippet, etc.)?

* Can I export the data?

* Is the data backed up?

* Is there an uptime guarantee?

* Is there support provided?

* Can you customize the design?

* Is it the biggest feature the fact that it has micro-payments integrated? Why would I use this instead of WordPress and a plugin for micro-payments?

Hi There.

- The blog loads fine. It is the combined traffic from HN and other platforms that's weighing. But I'm working on load-balancing

- Editing and publishing works simple. We use a flexible WYSIWYG editor where you can easily design the posts according to your taste. Publishing works with one click after editing.

- Currently It handles lots of traffic from +2000 bloggers around the world (still growing). But I have performed tests for 100,000 and everything still loads fine.

- Yes you can use your own domain. To do this, you'll need to upgrade to the Flying Solo Plan (PRO plan)

- I haven't built any REST API for external integration. But this is on my to-do list.

- Yes it has good SEO keywords. You can add more SEO keywords as you wish.

- As at now you cannot export the data. Its part of the version 2.0 plans.

- Yes the data is backed up

- There is 99% uptime guarantee.

- Yes there is support. 24/7 support either via email or phone call.

- For now the design cannot be customized. The platform was built to display all blog posts on the landing page and incorporate a simple link mapping. I am also working on building an override where users can edit the main template.

- The microsubscription feature is an added feature used by couple of full-time bloggers. I recently integrated it into the platform 2months ago. It is simple to use, offers donation features and more. Please visit microscriptions.com for more information

It says several times that it allows monetization without ads, but it says nowhere how. How?

EDIT: okay, I went looking on other pages of the site: it uses "micro-subscriptions" via https://microscriptions.com/.

Yes we use Microscriptions as the underlying monetization platform. I'll be sure to improve the landing page

How well does that work? (The micropayment system.)

Hi There. Microscriptions works well. I currently have 20 bloggers who use it. It works with affordable subscription prices. As low as $0.20.. I integrated my platform with theirs 2months ago. Please visit their website at microscriptions.com for more information, how to get started as well as integrating with QuickPublisher

Terrible landing page. I have no idea how this works exactly even after browsing through the site for a while and clicking around.

All the explanations just look like superficial rambling and don't really tell you how the product itself looks or works.

Is it a wordpress competitor? Is it a subscription tool? I have no idea. Even the one screenshot it has on the site is useless because nobody can really make sense of what's going on in that picture.

Hi There. It is a simple blogging platform. You can check out the demo blog link on the main site. That'll give you an idea of how it looks like.

I added a screenshot of how the site looks like on the main page.

We monetize the blog using Microscriptions Platform. It is a subscription-based platform we integrated with

I’m guessing English may not be your first language, some of the page does not read as smoothly as it could.

One tip: remove the words “be able” from phrases like “Be able to customize your blog with your logo, favicon, social media links and more”, it makes it more readable.

Thank you for the tip. I have updated the site. I really appreciate it

What does the page for writing/editing posts look like?

Hi There. The writing page is a simple form with fields. These include: Name, Description, SEO Tags, Content (this is where you are able to design your content), Display Image and Banner Image (this gets displayed at the top of your article).

Thank you for the reply! Does it have a WYSWYG mode, and does it have an HTML mode, and if both which is the default?

Hi There. Yes it has both. The default is the WYSIWYG mode. This allows for more customization and article post design

Does it support latex and math and code blocks?

Hi There. Yes We use a flexible WYSIWYG builder. <code>, quotes and more are supported

but no math?

There is a math editor plugin. But It does not currently support advanced equations. It only supports basic equations and symbols. But I can work on it for the next release (Next week Friday)

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