Show HN: mdto.page – Turn Markdown into a shareable webpage instantly | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: mdto.page – Turn Markdown into a shareable webpage instantly

mdto.page

58 pointshjinco31 comments

Hi HN

I built mdto.page because I often needed a quick way to share Markdown notes or documentation as a proper webpage, without setting up a GitHub repo or configuring a static site generator.

I wanted something dead simple: upload Markdown -> get a shareable public URL.

Key features:

Instant Publishing: No login or setup required.

Flexible Expiration: You can set links to expire automatically after 1 day, 7 days, 2 weeks, or 30 days. Great for temporary sharing.

It's free to use. I’d love to hear your feedback!

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In https://mdview.io/ I implemented sharing via url encoding so no server is needed, thou big files are not supported because of the url length limitation

looks cool

A while ago, I just wrote a filter to be able to paste markdown into a <name>.smd file, and an Apache filter to autoprocess them much like any other filter (and a <named>.smd.meta for title info and some other metadata).

This makes it super easy to write something cool on Reddit or whatever, then just paste the markdown into an index.smd file in a new directory (named meaningfully) and poof it's in a webpage.

The core of all of it is a /var/www/cgi-bin/markdown-to-html program centered on:

    python3 -m markdown -x codehilite -x fenced_code -x toc

It's enabled in my ~/www/.htaccess of all places:

  # This works, with setup in /etc/apache2/conf-enabled/mod-ext_filter-adds.conf
  AddType text/markdown .md
  AddType text/markdown .smd 
  AddOutputFilter markdown-to-html            md
  AddOutputFilter markdown-to-shtml;INCLUDES smd

Much easier to just edit markdown (index.smd usually) and reload than reconvert, and that filter above lets you include arbitrary HTML too, critical to deal with markdown numerous weaknesses.

I really suggest adding some way to report pages because phishers and spammers will abuse it when they find it.

Could add LLM-as-judge function to review new uploads and shadowban spam/scams

Thanks! That would be a good technical challenge for me. I'll try to get it reflected.

I use a self hosted HedgeDoc with Fail2Ban to deal with this. A cheap VPS + Coolify makes life so much better.

Separately, be cautious of people putting illegal content on your platform.

Appreciate the tips!

Looks nice, but if it was just because needed such tool, there're already mdshare and peerpad. There's also jbt's editor that saves state on URL, i.e., https://jbt.github.io/markdown-editor/#U1bwyOTics9XSEpMzlYoy....

I felt like most of the current tools lack good design. That’s why I’m planning to add lots of pretty themes and even a feature where users can customize their own later on.

There's also Markdeep

https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/

thanks for sharing

Looks interesting but Markdown is the only relevance. Submitted tool/page is about sharing/hosting. Markdeep is about making self-contained Markdown-written HTML pages.

I'm guessing it doesn't handle images because you'd have to upload the image, right? I tried one in this format: ![title](P1090910.JPG) with no luck. (Update: it works with URL links)

It doesn’t support local images yet since it currently only renders uploaded Markdown, but I’m looking into ways to make it work. thanks for the feedback!

Building something on markdown as well - https://voiden.md/

Also, nice project - I like the thinking here.

This looks very similar to https://docsify-this.net/

Adding an API can significantly increase the number of users, as it will make it easier for agents to share content.

Thanks! i’m planning to roll out API support soon

Hi,

First thing that came to my mind: how do I "curl" a md to it?

But then, I don't know how you intend to manage spam/abuse

To prevent abuse, I'm using Cloudflare Turnstile to challenge bot access. Since the server validates the token from the browser, curl doesn't work—you'll have to use the web UI to upload. It's the simplest way I could keep the spam away for now.

That's what I was worried about... Thanks for the answer!

why is it a problem?

Because you can't use it in a CI

Good point. I‘ll be adding login and API support soon

I like the idea and expiration dates. Got any example pages using either theme?

Glad you like the idea! I just put together a couple of quick examples to show how the themes look:

default: https://mdto.page/1E/ILeVn resume: https://mdto.page/1E/Cxhnf

Please use `:prefers-color-scheme` throughout.

Got it

Hmm. The explanation seems short enough to have written by hand easily. But I suppose that the natural style of AI output has the upside that it demonstrates the Markdown rendering well.

Or just upload as gist

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