Pen.io is now probably the most minimalist blog platform on the Web | Hacker News Reader

Pen.io is now probably the most minimalist blog platform on the Web

thenextweb.com

63 pointsfeint31 comments

There is an XSS on pen.io. I posted this a while ago, but feint didn't fix it.

http://xssdemo.pen.io

Suggestion: It is very hard to allow HTML but remove JavaScript. Write a method called something like isJSPresent() and then after you've done your filtering, check if JavaScript is on the page. If it is, return a HTML-encoded version of the page. Then, the security of your page will rely only on the correctness of that single method, and not on the correctness of your rewriter (which is much more complex).

The most minimalist blog platform is having your .txt file online and then append to it via bash.

You used bash? Luxury.

We used to have to get up at 10 o'clock at night, half an hour before we went to bed, edit our blog entries with "ed", tie them to pigeon's feet, and send them to the Web, where they'd arrive a week later, if you were lucky.

Now you try to tell the young people of today that.

They won't believe you.

googlecl posting to blogger, fwiw. I'm not maintaining a blogger blog, but the command line options are pretty neat.

http://code.google.com/p/googlecl/

For better or for worse, I'm a fan of minimalism, but it has to just work. That's not the case currently - I'm finding this very frustrating.

-I made a page, then registered, but there's no way to associate a previously made page to an account. (I guess I have to change the original name to a throwaway account and start again)

-No way to delete a page?

-I tried to make a simple list of links. It works once, but when you edit the page a second time, the :link tags are no longer properly parsed.

-Links move around or disappear in different views. In particular, the contacts link is gone when I log in.

The list goes on, but... am I the only one with all of these simple usage problems? Or have people upvoted this submission without actually trying the product?

I've always found http://jottit.com to be excellent.

It's almost the same as something called http://jottit.com from a million years ago. I think it's another exercise in futility.

I find the "penio" name and the phallus-like logo fascinating and intringuing, though.

Should add rel="nofollow" to the anchor tags it creates to help minimise value of the service to SEO abusers.

I suppose Iceland's domain registrar was busy that day.

calepin.co is effectively a hosted version of pelican, a minimalist python SSG, integrated with dropbox. Pretty nice and very minimal.

This is lovely, I'm going to give it a shot. Thanks for the link :)

You have to be kidding me: "penio"? It sounds like a foreign name for penis. Even the logo looks phallic. Come on.

Companies spend a fortune checking names. This site is in English and has a single letter difference.

Sometimes, a pen is just a pen. :)

Here it's more like a sword.

I was looking for some demo pages, but the link at the bottom http://pen.io/showlast.php (latest pages) is actually showing only the latest, which are unfortunately frequently left empty or unmodified.

it would be nice to have some "pick random" link, choosing across some well visited pages.

After seeing this, I decided to attempt my own minimalist (dropbox) blog. Just need to automate the post list somehow...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26639308/miniblog/index.html

Not a real blog replacement, but it was fun to play with.

Wait, how is there no backend on pen.io? IT's got to be hosted somewhere, and the pages have to be stored somewhere, right?

Or is it simply using something like github or dropbox, and serving it publicly from there and pen.io is just a conduit?

The article's author seems to be using the term "back end" to refer to an administrative area of the site where you log in to make changes.

It must be storing them in localStorage. That would make a truly minimalist blog - the one that is visible only to its author :)

Error pages would be nice if handled correctly, I type http://pen.io/show ?

You are running apache, I believe this should be a snap :)

Cheers, Jose

It might be the simplest for the average user to use, but there's no way it's the most minimalistic. That has to go to SSGs, for example Jekyll.

Regarding output? Any sufficently advanced SSG is indistinguishable from a dynamic site (cf. Movable Type). Regarding the software itself? Even default jekyll has quite a few dependencies, compared to something like blosxom or even simple dynamic blog engines (bet there are a few that aren't more than one page of PHP).

"Minimalist" gets thrown about a lot, too much, probably. Especially for software, but even for presentation/design, where "simple" would often fit better.

Never mind it's all bigger than just using "cat" for blogging and exposing your .plan over HTTP…

Didn't the whole "minimalism" fad die a while ago?

Tumblr is pretty minimalistic in its own way.

Erroneously calling random things that lack functionality and polish "minimalist" is a fad, but the minimalism itself is an well established form of design.

Nobody has bothered to mention the horrible name/logo combination?

It looks nothing like what you're thinking of. Maybe the Iceland domain name taken?

I admit it's a stretch, but the combination really pushed me into blue territory.

The old pastehtml.com seems easier to use to me.

I think it even won some award at Launch, 2011.

Drag and drop photos don't work

for me/on Safari

vi index.html

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