So htf do I delete a submission? I've emailed hn@ycombinator.com. Clearly I'm just an idiot.
192 karma · joined September 9, 2020
Stuck in lockdown, I wanted to hack on something fresh so I created a blogging app (yay originality!) for my personal sites which had languished, gathering dust as they often do. I really enjoyed building it (Ruby on Rails, if you wondered), I learned a lot. It turns out I also really like using the app, and I've actually blogged a lot more since I built it.
I hadn't planned to 'commercialise' it at all because I figured not many people in 2021 want to pay cash money for a basic (albeit intentionally!) blogging app, and B2C is generally a tough place to live.
Despite knowing better we got locked down again so I built a marketing page and I thought I might as well ask the Hacker News massive what they think of it before I inevitably turn it off. Is old-school blogging dead? Shall we try and resuscitate it? You tell me.
Go forth and roast me - I can take it! :-)
Were you on your own domain? In that situation I guess you could have changed DNS and piped it to Gmail temporarily.
How many things are you moving for it to take that long?!
I accidentally marked everything in a folder as unread recently and that did take a while, but I did get a very helpful progress bar while it chugged away.
Thanks again for a fantastic product and service! I really think you should blog a bit more about the company and culture, that would probably be all the marketing you’d need :-)
It would be good if they would blog about more about the company itself actually. I don’t remember them publishing much about that.
A todo feature is an interesting idea.
I’m not too bothered by it, it’s email and I’m more concerned about high quality product, availability, stability and them not selling my data or using it for ads.
If I wanted to send something truly private by email I’d just use GPG :-)
Really one of my favourite tech companies.
Not an employee just a happy customer!
Perhaps they’ll make Touch Bar an optional extra.
From the home page: "Blogline is a simple, fast, personal writing and blogging app. Publish articles, blog posts or write private thoughts. Share with the world or just family and friends. Write from anywhere, on any device." (yes, it needs work!)
I wrote this during the first lockdown mainly because I wanted to write some fresh code in the evenings, but also because I was dissatisfied with Wordpress, Tumblr, Posthaven and static sites, having tried all of them over the years for my blogs. It's built with Rails 6.1. Probably not much demand for this but I've enjoyed writing it and I run a few blogs with it.
Beta is pretty much done but I still need to put up a pricing page and connect to Stripe so it's invite only right now (but I can provide invite codes via email as per home page).
Have you seen http://www.librarything.com/
I wrote this during the first lockdown mainly because I wanted to write some fresh code in the evenings, but also because I was dissatisfied with Wordpress, Tumblr, Posthaven and static sites, having tried all of them over the years for my blogs.
A blog app is literally every web framework tutorial so it’s a bit embarrassing to show (“is that the best idea you’ve got?!”) but the funny thing is, I actually really love using it and it makes me want to write more, and I am writing more on my blogs! Which is the point of a writing/blogging app after all. It should encourage you to write, not get in the way with themes, CSS, hosting and all that entails.
You can only sign up with an invite code because I haven’t fully decided whether to subject the world to YABA (yet another blog app). I was going to add billing support first as I don’t want to support free customers, but I might see what the reception is here first ;-)
I have a bunch of ideas that will keep the basic writing/publishing concept but make it more of a hub for reading too.
I should probably turn off WiFi.
I browse indie bookshops, talk to colleagues and friends, read reviews and I’m on GoodReads. People know I like books so they buy or loan me books sometimes. I keep a list of loads of books that sound good, then chip away at it. The list is always growing so things fall off it, unread, eventually. It’s more of a stack, but with occasional queue behaviours.
I will typically always have about 10 unread books in a pile that I haven’t yet started. Which one I pick up next depends on mood. If I’ve just read an amazing novel I’ll probably choose non-fiction next as another novel immediately will often never feel as enjoyable.