Show HN: Blot, a static blog powered by Dropbox
blot.im
blot.im
I saw your video intro also. I tried to do something similar using Flickr API and Javascript -- to create free Photographer Portfolio websites using Dropbox for my friend.
Then I abandoned the project few days after we went live because every few days, the site visitor would get a bandwidth exceeded error from Dropbox and the site would not render.
In this context, some questions for you
1) How do you account for Dropbox bandwidth usage exceeding? Esp. if I start using your service, and my post ends up on front page of HN?
2) How do we embed Media, ex: Images and Videos? Is there some convention that a blogger must follow in the markdown posts? Should the media be uploaded to some common folder (like how wordpress has wp-upload folder) or does it reside in a sub-folder?
3) URLs? How are urls handled? Do we have ability to over-ride it?
4) Archives (for SEO) ?
5) PermUrls (for social sharing) ?
6) Sitemaps to submit to google, yahoo etc (for increasing Traffic) ?
Sorry for all the questions, but I am really looking to use Dropbox for blogging and this seems like a great idea! Just trying to make sure some/all my needs are met.
1) Blog posts are converted into HTML, stored on my servers, which Blot then serves to people who visit your blog. Dropbox's bandwidth cap won't affect your blog.
2) Currently you can use markdown to embed an external image. In future I want to add a way to embed images that are inside Blot's Dropbox folder.
3) Each blog post is assigned an id. The slug after the ID is for SEO purposes. For example, all these URLs point to the same blog post:
http://david.blot.im/37/san-francisco-to-la
http://david.blot.im/37/foo-bar
I plan to add a mechanism to override the generated URL slug.
4) Blot automatically generates an archives page for each Blog. See my archive page here:
5) I don't quite understand this question, did I answer this in #3?
6) Sitemaps are on the to do list!
Looking forward to seeing your updates on the Blot framework. Rock on!!
»Put simply, Scriptogr.am is a tool for generating simple, elegant, static weblogs by reading Markdown files stored in your Dropbox folder.«
And you can host your own domain, too.
Things I would like added:
1)Possibility to add a seperate about page and other pages.
2)Allow for a one line blurb on sidebar to describe what the blog is all about.
3)Custom Title for blog/site. Eg <name>'s blog to My Awesome Site.
4)Option to remove date from post instead of having to use CSS display:none:
Otherwise I'm happy. Was using WordPress and SquareSpace recently to host a simple blog but felt like it was overkill. I do not like either of their mobile apps. They feel clunky compared to IA Writer.
And for me, for writing, you cannot beat the simplicity of your favourite text editor and dropbox for publishing. Whether on desktop or mobile. The combination works really well.
First impressions, am happy with blot.im. Its barebones but lets see how it turns out in the wild.
These are all good features to have.
1) About page and custom pages are on the to do list. I need to work out a simple way to add this content from the user's perspective.
2 & 3) Great idea for the blurb and custom site title.
4) Interesting, hadn't anticipated this request. Would you like a global option to hide publish dates?
And yeah, IA writer is excellent. It's great to be able to publish a blog post from inside their mobile app!
Something to work on, as this is really plain jane:-
Media embedding? Comments? Custom URL generation? Some nice custom CSS's available? Microsoft Word support? If I upload my Thesis (MS Word), will the tables/pictures be automatically uploaded?
There is a chapter that I want to upload straightaway, and this solution can be a godsend solution for that purpose. Cut the chapter and drop it in the folder. 5 second work. I am amazed by the simplicity.
Media embedding is already possible using markdown. I plan to add a feature to embed media that you put inside Blot's folder.
Here's what I'm planning to add to Blot, roughly ordered by priority.
1. Comments
2. Support for other file formats. RTF will be the easiest to add next, then DOC and perhaps PDF. There are libraries which make this relatively straightforward but I need to evaluate them first.
3. Custom blog post URLs. More generally allow you to customize each post's metadata.
4. Photo posts
Incidentally, what markdown converter are you using at the moment?
https://github.com/chjj/marked
And will look into pandoc, thank you!
However, if you agree with the headline, you're definitely in the market for what Blot provides.
There is something similar out there called calepin (1). It uses the python based pelican static web site generator. Not sure what extra features your solution offers.
But I'm worried about something. The credit card input on the payment page shows a lock even though the form is NOT submitted over HTTPS... that makes it look like you're blatantly lying to your customers. Am I missing something?
EDIT: I was missing something. While the HN post links to the HTTPS version, I somehow ended up on a non HTTPS version of the site at some point. Which seems to allow sending CC information over a non encrypted form.
[0] - http://drp.io/SP
My only feedback is charge per month, and more. I'd be willing to pay $4 a month without thinking twice.
How do you handle scale if you are hosting it? Are you load balanced? Highly available? Do you use a CDN?
The title is generated from the first H1 tag if there is one.
Scaling the site is honestly something I'm going to have to learn more about. I'll set up a load balancer before it becomes necessary. Currently a single EC2 instance seems to be working OK.
As for pricing, the price will only go up in future and perhaps I'll move to a monthly fee. I just wanted to get something set up quickly.
But that's just me.
Are MultiMarkdown features (linking to internal sections, footnotes, definition lists, etc) available?
And not yet, I'll have to look into MultiMarkdown. Those features sound like a good idea.