Ghost: The Future of Blogging (Node.js)
tryghost.org
tryghost.org
Possibly my ire was raised a bit further by the fact that I found that out in what seemed a slightly bait and switch-y way - "Try this!" click "Maybe later if you pay us!" Hmmmm.
Those gripes aside, it looks pretty.
This looks gorgeous, but many of these features are non-trivial to implement.
Could anyone tell me what's written at the bottom of the dialog box that pops up when you click the "Ready? Try Ghost" button, please? My computer is a 10'' netbook, and the box is outside the visual range of my screen. Unfortunately, the scrollbar scrolls the grayed out background, not the box itself, so I have no chance of doing anything other than hitting the back button.
(To give them credit, what I can read is: "We've built a prototype, and it's working really well! But there's a lot to do.")
Is there a page I can access directly to try Ghost out, without having to go through that box?
Which limitations are that? I'm curious as to who their user is here. My grandmother or my friend who is a developer? For my grandmother, Wordpress suits perfectly. For my developer, Jekyll.
I feel like this is solving a non-problem here. The UI looks great, but then why not just stick it on top of the Wordpress admin?
If anything, people's major complaint with Wordpress is that it's a horrible tangle of spaghetti. What's the state-of-the-art for Node.js web frameworks?
There'd be a lot of irony in launching an aesthetically pleasing CMS admin panel overtop yet-another spaghetti engine that is hard to augment.
A platform itself may have technical limitations, most of which can usually be worked around or improved on, but often the limitations of "accomplishment" are often in the developer's mind.
Indeed. Wordpress is a very easy product to use, and adding tech-community loves like markdown will do absolutely nothing in the general community (how can markdown be superior to a WYSIWYG toolbar-formatting model when dealing with generalists?).
The project -- while looking good -- seems somewhat confused in focus, as it seems to strive to pander to the hacker community (node, express, etc), yet argues usability benefits that I don't think really hold water.
For example, these guys are web developers and designers, what could possibly stop them from building it and putting on the web? Hardly the 25K pounds they are asking for.
I think the product is awesome, but I dont understand what you need the money for especially if they are boasting Open Source and not for profit.
Therefore, I like the trend of kickstarting open source project:
- the initial phase where you have to work hard and yet don't have a lot to show gets funded
- you are forced to think about it in terms of a product to attract backers
- there's less incentive to pivot the hosted platform into a user-tracking and data mining outfit later.
They do a kick starter today, what about tomorrow? not for profit doesn't mean they dont charge fees, I am sure they will charge. I am not belittling their efforts but they have all the required skills and enough financial ability (seems like they have held jobs previous to this) to pay for hosting till that can become a reality.
Your supporting arguments sound like, they were made up to back your purely contrary conclusion.
I see no contradiction.
in case you are forgetting all the awesome blogging related items that have cropped up in the last few months:
1. https://posthaven.com/ 2. https://medium.com/ 3. http://draftin.com/ 4. https://svbtle.com/
That's just off the top of my head.
This is a Kickstarter pitch, in which case I'm quoting myself:
Other than that, definitely an interesting project.
I went for a pretty tiny install of a webapp with SQLite, figuring being the only user, what can go wrong, but had to migrate to postgres pretty soon because I kept getting errors when my actions clashed with one of the background task (that ran every 15 minutes).
Sarcasm aside, it looks pretty nice but I don't see anything particularly revolutionary that I would move away from a more established platform.
Anyway, what's all this negativity towards somebody trying to do something with new tech? I thought we all like that sort of thing?
If you pay us. Oh...
Seems really nice though.
The only problem is that it doesn't really scroll to the part you're editing - instead it assumes that if you've scrolled to 50% in the markdown code, the preview should also scroll to 50%. Add a couple of images and this assumption becomes false.
I know this is hard to do (involves hooking into the markdown parser) but it would truly be a killer feature.
1. Find the shortest path out of a currently-edited tag (look to see if the cursor is between a nearby set of < and > characters). In most cases, the cursor is not in a tag, so this is not needed.
2. Insert an empty marker span.
3. Find that span in the preview pane.
4. Find the span's parent block, add a class to that block to highlight it, and then scroll to its location.
Seen here: http://tiamat.tsotech.com/images/tiamat-authoring-2012-10.pn... (the yellow paragraph at the bottom right)
Go ahead - type in some markdown, then edit the page. You'll be presented with a two-pane view. Your markdown is rendered dynamically. When you're done, just choose the access level for the page (public/private) and you're good to go.
They have that feel, but they also want some money for their troubles - to justify/legitimize it as worth their time.
It's a blogging platform after all. Their feature set could be done by one man in 2 to 5 weeks time with some experience and perseverance. I hate to belittle it below its merit, as I do think some features of Ghost make for something potentially useable. The project also could be nice because of the so-called committed team behind it maintaining it into the future, as Wordpres does.
I'd just like some clarification of when I can get my grubby little hands on some code, especially if that date will change based on funding levels.
[0] https://github.com/natew/obtvse2
Admin: http://cl.ly/image/0o450t3C3c3G
Edit with Live Preview: http://cl.ly/image/0w052g1n1U40
If you want me to give you money, I'd like to see progress (and provide feedback) along the way, not just wait for the v1.0 release.
So in this case, it seems like you're using "Free and Open" as a label to get interest, but you're not really that keen on actually being open.
I understand why kickstarter exists, and I think it's a decent tool for some projects. That said, it's difficult for me to back something that's only screenshots and a brief "this is totally how it works" box on the main site. I want to be able to check out how the product works from the inside out. If I believe in it, I'll put money towards it. If I don't, I won't.
In this case, I can't demo it to a point where I'd say "this is a worthy product."
if there was a decent node.js based jekyll replacement, I would be using that.
I wrote https://github.com/marijnh/heckle to fill exactly that role. Though it only does the parts of Jekyll that I happened to need for my own blog. Calling it 'decent' might be pushing it.
As far as can tell it's just the authentication that binds to Github.
Guess RSS doesn't belong in the future.
Im guessing thats why OP specified node.js in the title
I just migrated here from Slashdot; am I doing it right? :p