Show HN: Torchpad – The simplest way to make a wiki | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Torchpad – The simplest way to make a wiki

torchpad.com

28 pointsbclee45 comments

The landing page is pretty, but can't try without signup, walking away...

Sorry, we are developing the demo editor.

But you can see the example wiki site here:

http://markdown.torchpad.com/

You should add some screenshots so people can at least see what you're trying to sell. That's one of the first things I look for with anything like this so I can get a feel for what's being offered.

Otherwise maybe it's prematurely on HN if you wanted to get best value for hitting the front page?

Definitely needs screenshots. It's nice to say that you can "manage your pages clearly in tree structure" but I'd like to see what it looks like without trying.

Also, it definitely needs an "About" page. Who are you people?

Just put a link to this on your landing page. Honestly, I am rarely interested in what the creator of a product wants to tell me about it. I just want a brief description of what it is and why I might want to use it, and pictures. A demo is better again, bit I want to see your product, not read about it.

Well the problem now is that you've got your publicity before you were ready for it. Now when you do have a demo, your publicity has already been and gone.

I like the landing page. It looks good. But without a demo, you're already just-another-startup.

I took a chance on signing up even though it was my instinct to run... my reward was the next screen:

"We're sorry but something went wrong"

That's an immediate double fail on the "simplest way to make a wiki" headline.

When I'm forced to put things into wikis or content management systems, I usually edit text in my favourite text editor (via the "It's all Text" extension or similar). Unfortunately the javascript-based editor in this wiki is too clever for that extension to work. Fortunately a dance involving Ctrl-a, Ctrl-c, edit elsewhere and copy back, and Ctrl-v does work. So I guess I wouldn't find it too annoying if I had to use this thing :-). Direct access to the git repository would be nice though.

You're right, same with edit-with-emacs on chrome. Shame, the editor looks nice but I definitely wouldn't want to give up my own editor functions for it.

Now if this was tied to something like a personal Github page I could then just push my changes within my own text editor and shell. Now that would be nice.

Demo account: demo@example.com / Pass: torchpad

wow, thank you so much :)

i loved pbwiki until it became pbworks. man that was great. now pbworks is like a $1500 minimum commitment...

i understand that they had to pivot, but bleh.. i hate confluence, the most credible alternative.

can't use you guys because

1) no data export

2) no pricing information (I don't want a "free" product, I want to pay.)

3) no privacy policy / terms

4) no social proof of credibility (this is probably more important than any of the above)

Torchpad is based on Git, so it will support git clone in the future.

Torchpad is free, but for some advanced features (like custom domain) need to upgrade to premium member.

We are working on 3 and 4 now.

Thanks for your feedback!

Nice MVP. I like the idea of using git behind it, that is novel and makes 'owning' the data easy. Could be the killer feature.

Other comments: - what is with the speckled grey textured background? Oy, are we back in 1997? Terrible!

- if I actually used this, I'd want to brand the page a bit to make it look how I want, I didn't see any template to edit.

- multiple owners and having users there is very cool, as is logging in via github. (and automatically claiming the subdomain off the github user)

Anyways, keep it up, I think there is demand for a reasonably priced wiki for sure.

Thank you.

We'll make the background better, and will support custom theme(or custom CSS) in the future.

The idea of a wiki using a Git back-end is certainly not novel:

Gollum: https://github.com/gollum/gollum

Gitit: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/gitit-0.1.1

Git-wiki: https://github.com/sr/git-wiki

WiGit: http://el-tramo.be/wigit/

etc.

Torchpad is based on Git. You can track any changes. In the future, Torchpad allows you to download the git repository for backup.

It's either in the future or it's in the present. I know it's marketing speak but if you want to appeal to the large number of people who are pedants of the English language it would be better to use one tense throughout

Otherwise, nice concept! Look forward to taking it for a test run

Judging from the front page, I don't think English is the native language of the developers.

Really like the syntax highlighting in the Markdown editor! Is this an open source lib, or something custom?

Hello, It's an open source lib called http://codemirror.net/

But we add a lot of custom features on it.

When I do the search I see "✓" in the query string.

http://www.torchpad.com/workspace/wikis/demo/search?utf8=%E2...

That's my first time ever see such in query string!

We add the utf8 param to prevent from Internet Explorer bug.

Any reason why you have to add utf-8 param? This is interesting, especially the check mark - that's actually my first (or number zero) question :)

renamed the account, made a new page, tried to publish: Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 400 (Bad Request) http://torchpad.com/workspace/wikis/cikplanner/pages/change_... PATCH http://torchpad.com/workspace/wikis/cikplanner/pages/change_... 400 (Bad Request) workspace-ae3672136b7c324f491a92f2d662ce00.js:3

Also try http://slimwiki.com

What's the export format, do you know?

We are currently building the export functionality, what would you like? :-)

Thanks for great product. this is exactly what i've been looking for. but when i use chinese or korean words, last character always disappear. maybe you didnt consider 2-byte words. check it, plz

Do you plan on offering self-hosted setups in the future?

We don't have the plan for it.

But will support https in the near future.

This or git clone + open source is pretty critical. I want to recommend this to my company, but I can't rely on the longevity of a fresh-out-the-gate startup for storing crucial enterprise knowledge.

Do you guys have a repo? I'd like to see how this works first. I need to know more about the permissions system, specifically.

It isn't open source. But we will consider for it in the future :)

That's a +1 from me, I'd love an open-source version for self-hosting. I'd additionally be happy to pay for the "licence to self host" or something silly like that as long as I can see the code somehow (which is a big deal for me).

Why do I have to sign up to see anything? Please refer to the earlier "stop punishing your users" post

Nice work. I can see myself using this once you have https switched on.

Great Product. Been looking for something like this in long time.

Heads up, your footer on the signup page looks wonky

Pretty cool!, landing page is so amazing <3

No demo link on the website. - No Sign Up.

Try the demo account: demo@example.com / Pass: torchpad

Torchpad now supports HTTPS!

Really Goooooood!!

great

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