adishasanic

I started with the idea of making a website builder based on text editor, and this mvp version allows you to make websites using just text editor. It's like Notion, except you can only use text and links (in the future also images and buttons), you don't need to have a title at the beginning of each page, and you can select various combinations of fonts for each web page. It's free to use, and if you don't like it, it's easy to delete an account. :) When there is more features, there might be a premium plan, but for now, just testing with users who need to create pages using only text, e.g. Careers and Job Posts pages, documents, ideas, whitepapers, privacy policies, writing drafts and publications, resumes, etc.

Thank you for your suggestion, but I don't intend to do that. Veonid users data is hosted by Amazon Web Services.

Elon Musk profile is just something as an example for no particular reason except that it's someone who has a biography on Wikipedia, there was no intention to make a parody of Twitter's new policy.

I'm OP and an author of this website. I don't know you, but thank you for sharing your thoughts and findings.

songy.design was a website domain I used for my UI/UX design portfolio, but now I use a personal name for it: adishasanic.com

typen.co was a writing app, basically a Notion competitor, which I founded, designed and bootstrapped to develop in 2016 and discontinued it 6 months after launch. There were 2000 users registered, but very few were using it, due to concerns about keeping notes in it and it was hard to compete with Notion and iA writer, which had also iOS and Android apps.

You can check what those websites were using Internet Archive: https://archive.org

I don't know how long a life Veonid will have, but I have much more experience now in product design and Veonid is more for publishing than for writing and storing content, so it does not have the same obstacles as Typen. It's not a development exercise, my goal is to keep working on it for years because I believe there should be a way for anyone to create their own space from which to present themselves and publish anything, without their content being branded by platform and restricted for anyone who didn't sign up to platform.

It's not perfect, but this was after only 10 hours of development by someone who is very busy, and who told me there are ways to make it faster, but the goal for launch was to just make it work, make it accessible and keep improving.

"Stupidity" and "incompetence" is unnecessary IMO, but it's nice to know that you're enthusiastic about development.

No bots were used for this post, admins can check the profiles of upvoters.

Thank you all for upvoting, there are now 100 new users registered after 6 hours of publishing on HackerNews, hope you all find it useful and please share any feedback.

Interesting flow, but I disagree — I think there are too many steps until user gets some reward from it.

I think a website is essentially a way to share content and communicate, so the first step, after signing up, should be to write content and immediately see it live at some subdomain. Everything after that is just editing/customization. So it'd be as it is in Veonid:

1. Read a landing page and click "Sign up"

2. Enter email address and sign up via magic link (no need to worry about providing password which you maybe use somewhere else)

2. "You've signed up!" (already some reward and feedback about what happened)

3. Click "Create a website" button

4. Write content and click "Publish" when ready

5. Done! Your website is live at a domain: startup.com/123456789 (another reward)

6. (optional, complicated stuff) Change template? Setup custom domain? Edit content?

I made up the word from random letters making sure it contains the letters "id" and has .com domain, which is not easy to find these days for 1 short word.

Thank you! Is there anything specific which is missing from Veonid for you to be able to recommend it to friends and family?

Thank you for your additional feedback. I replied to your comment below, but to reply to your additional feedback here:

There is no organization behind Veonid — it's just me who designed UI/UX and bootstrapped development of it. Currently, Veonid costs me $0 per month because services like Vercel, Hasura and Clerk are completely free to a certain extent. If there is more than 5000 monthly active users, it will cost just $25 per month for Clerk, and that price I can easily pay for 1-2 years without regretting. I plan to try to include some premium features in the next few months with a goal for Veonid make at least enough monthly income to pay for itself.

Of course, there is a risk of any app shutting and no guarantee that anything will remain for years and decades, but what I can say is I intend to keep Veonid hosting up for at least the next 12 months even if almost noone uses it. With more users, and especially if there are premium users at some point, I intend to keep it much longer.

Thank you for your feedback — definitely valid concerns with writing or uploading anything into a web app created by 1 person. I will definitely consider what's the best way to keep user data always in user's hands. Some things I can say which may provide some relief:

- I intend to keep Veonid a platform to publish and present things from, not to write and keep things in. I encourage using tools like Notion or UpNote to do all your thinking and writing, and only paste into Veonid what you intend to have public in nicely designed pages/presentations.

- Hosting Veonid does not cost and will not cost anything for the first 5,000 monthly active users, and after that it's only $25/mo. for Clerk.

- I intend to keep Veonid profiles text-only, so data storage is minimum and thus fast and low cost for a while.

- Thanks to NextJS, Vercel and Hasura, updating and maintaining Veonid is really easy.

- If it comes to shutting down the app, I'll notify all users at least 1 month in advance, via email and via app, so there will be enough time to save data.

- In 4 hours since I posted Veonid on Hackernews, 60 new users registered of which 56 created a profile, which is encouraging for a v1 and finding product-market fit.

- I have more than 10 years of experience designing UI/UX of web and mobile apps, and I have launched web apps before, which is no guarantee of what will happen with Veonid, but may be of passion and familarity with the challenges and obstacles of designing and building products.

Notion is an all-in-one notetaking platform with an ability to share a page, so any page you share is nested within all your notes, and pages shared with Notion have a Notion logo on it. It's a different purpose and direction, but technically yes, at this point, you can create the same page with Notion, and I encourage you to use Notion because I think it is one of the best products there is.

Problem with Notion to create a personal website is it doesn't guide you to it from the landing page and it offers a lot which just misleads someone who is not so tech savvy and just wants to put together a simple personal website. At this point, the goal for Veonid is not to compete with Notion as a page-builder, but just to be the fastest way to create a personal website for those who need to share just a name, bio and a few links.

At this point, definitely is near linktree, but:

- linktree shows their logo on each profile if it's a Free plan. Veonid does not show a logo, just profile info, so there's less distractions.

- linktree process for creating and editing a profile is not very simple and quick. There's a lot of forms to fill and a lot of buttons to click.

- linktree link requires a name or username, and if you change a username the link will become invalid or misleading. Veonid uses an ID which will never change.

- linktree requires a personal photo as an avatar by default, and if you don't upload a photo, they show a circle with initials. Veonid requires only text — a name and description.

- linktree shows a username on page by default, which is unnecessary for a professional who just wants to show a name and bio.

- linktree's branding and appearance theme options are mostly designed for young audiences, teens, musicians. Veonid is more simple and universal, making profiles more presentable for personal or professional use.

- linktree offers a lot of options which can be overwhelming when you just want to edit content.

- linktree allows just 1 profile per 1 account. With Veonid, you can create multiple profiles from 1 account, each profile with its own URL.

And this is just a v1 for Veonid. The plan is to make it more capable in the future for showing more types of content rather than more appearance themes. The ultimate goal is to make it easy to create and manage personal websites as your own space or stage from which you can present yourself and publish your work and your thoughts, without anything blocking people from accessing it such as platform branding or requirements to sign up or subscribe, which is what most website building, publishing and social media platforms do.

Sorry, but you cannot download a website. Veonid is just an app to create a public page which you can send to your friends, followers, clients, employers, collaborators, etc. as one introduction from which people can learn more about you and find all your profiles and websites.

If it was possible, what would you do with a downloaded website and where would you take it?

True, at this point you can get a similar page with about.me , but:

- about.me takes a few minutes to create a profile because they show a form with a lot of steps, so you have to do a lot of thinking just to put together a simple page.

- about.me requires uploading a photo to create a profile, and it's not possible to have a website without a personal photo. Veonid requires only a name and description.

- about.me shows a job title or "tags" next to a name. Veonid doesn't.

- about.me shows a background color by default, which can be excessive for some. Veonid is just white background and plain text, so it's more universal.

- about.me allows creating only 1 profile per account. With Veonid, you can create multiple profiles from 1 account — for example, if you want to create a profile for someone else, or another profile for yourself but with a different content or for a different purpose.

Thank you for your feedback, Mike. It is an mvp, so there's definitely lots of things to improve, but the goal for v1 was just to make it possible to create and publish a personal website / profile.

If you have any suggestions for improvement, or if you're a freelance/consultant developer, please send your feedback, availability and rate to adishasanic@icloud.com

Less steps to create a web page and more minimalist. This is just an mvp, the plan is to make it more capable in the future, but for now it's just for someone who need one paragraph for biography and a few links. In the future, you should be able to publish writings, show images, etc. and to include more info about yourself so it can be used like a resume/CV.

For now it's not monetized, and what is free now will remain free, so no worries that something will suddenly be restricted. In the future, it may be monetized in a way where there are new features which require upgrading to premium, so there'd be a Free and Premium plan.