I signed up for this the other day and so far really love it. Write a markdown/text file in Dropbox and within 30 seconds or so it's published as a nicely-rendered blog post. As someone who used Jekyll for years and got tired of running hosting and doing rsyncs etc, this is really nice for personal blogging.
The usability of the blot.im site itself is a bit lacking. You get a totally different UI when you're logged in, and the links to documentation on how to format your posts and what the different dropbox folders mean are gone. I had to open an Incognito window to find the documentation (spoiler: https://blot.im/help). The service is dead-simple to use and supports a wide variety of posting styles and formats.
Glad to hear you like it so far. I’m working on a redesign of the dashboard to bring it in line with the front-facing site. I know it’s not good enough as it is and I promise it’ll be fixed.
GitLab Pages is only slightly more involved in the setup but the end result is the same, with the added bonus that you can completely customise the pipeline, including not using Jekyll but e.g Hugo (sample[0]) or whatever else you fancy as a generator.
"no interface" is nice marketing, but of course there still is an interface. It just happens to be different from what we usually think of as an interface, but documents placed in Dropbox is still an interface.
Honestly, unless it would take you less than half an hour per year on average to do whatever you want with the source code, I think buying it is the more economical option.
While you are updating things. I think it would be good to re-enable the YouTube controls-bar on the video. I had to drop out of your site and go to YouTube directly, to be able to watch the video on mute with closed captioning.
I mean, Dropbox is basically a nice front end to Amazon S3 - and doing S3 yourself by hand isn't much cheaper than paid Dropbox (or wasn't when I looked a few months ago).
But I am actually surprised I couldn't quickly find a DIY-Dropbox project.
There are also plugins that generate a static version of WordPress, so you can run it locally as a site generator and deploy static files anywhere you like.
Agreed on WordPress. In fact, I'm about to start working on the second edition of my book, Technical Blogging, and I will still recommend WordPress despite my audience being highly technical. (Of course, I'll discuss the alternatives as well.)
I'm much more likely to continue to update a site in my spare time if it's a static site on a managed service than if I have to keep on top of security updates for a web server and a CMS and a backing database and the operating system(s) underneath it all. It's just too much administration for something I mildly enjoy doing in the first place.
But your insistence that Wordpress (possibly as a static gen) is worth it has me interested. Where would you recommend I pick up a DRM-free copy of the first edition?
Awesome. Thank you for your kind words. A lot has changed in 6 years and I learned much more as well. I'll ensure it's a worthwhile upgrade for those who read the first edition as well.
Octopress is similar to this for google drive but I don't think its been updated in years - no support for custom domains, themes, etc but the idea is great.
$20 per year seems steep enough to count as outrageous. Especially when compared to other hosted blog options like WordPress, Blogger, Livejournal, Tumblr, etc. Heck, if I get a free ".tk" website, with maybe free 5GB web hosting with WP.org installed and a free 5GB CDN from Cloudinary, I can "self-host" WordPress for free.
So am I missing a major value-add over any of the above options that makes the $20 a reasonable cost?
This dev created a service that is hosted by himself. There is no "steep" in $20 if you think about server costs and support. Heck, think about how less $20 is, in terms of a whole year! I don't know this guy and I don't need his service but I'm sorry for him that our "every must be cheap or free" dev-culture will make his product less attractive by not making the customer to the product instead.
It's cleaner, you have version controlled dropbox files, edit seamlessly on your computer using any editor. All the pain points/features are listed on the site.
This looks really nice. Elegantly simple, and very reasonably priced. I could easily see Blot carving out a niche with customers for whom the likes of Squarespace or Wix is total overkill.
How is that different than any other static website generator that started way back with Blosxom and has now grown to a dozens of different generators?
Github pages is also really simple to use, unless you have problems with git.
I couldn't find an easy way to edit textfiles stored on github from my iPhone or iPad.
But if you use Dropbox, there are several apps that were made specifically to write posts and content in Markdown. When you tap into the Dropbox ecosystem, you gain a lot in ease of use.
You are correct and it will be fixed. The rate limit on LE certificates for subdomains was too low for my usage. Since LE have recently released support for wildcard certs, I will be enabling HTTPS traffic on Blot subdomains as soon as I can.
I recently got a gemini PDA, and i started to look at blogging on this thing. (basically android phone with physical keyboard)
Two biggest contenders were wordpress and blogger. I don't want a cms for my blog so blogger made sense, unfortunately it's tied up to google.
Ghost seems compelling, but 20$/month or 5-10$ on other hosting companies is too much, i won't spend hundred(s) every year on my blog. For now at least.
There is markdown editors on F-droid, and static site generators are viable.
How have I never heard of this Gemini PA!?! I took a look and it really seems awesome! It's a tad pricey (I'm referring to the model with wifi only at $499 USD)...but admittedly I am a cheapskate, and I'm sure prices will go down with increased adoption, economies of scale, etc. ;-) Nevertheless, it really seems to be an amazing form factor. I could absolutely see this as being my laptop for the road. Thanks for sharing this!
126 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] thread(Blot looks as easy to use as other static site generators)
The usability of the blot.im site itself is a bit lacking. You get a totally different UI when you're logged in, and the links to documentation on how to format your posts and what the different dropbox folders mean are gone. I had to open an Incognito window to find the documentation (spoiler: https://blot.im/help). The service is dead-simple to use and supports a wide variety of posting styles and formats.
p.s. I recently added support for git if you’d rather not use Dropbox (https://twitter.com/Blot__/status/996506149712211968). And as a point of trivia, Blot launched just under four years ago here on HN in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8183498
[0]: https://gitlab.com/pages/hugo
http://adombic.appspot.com/
I don’t expect anyone to use it, just wanted to show for fun since we are talking about simplicity :)
Could be a big drawback (even my stupid blog has a short CSS file, so that it doesn't look too ugly: https://try.popho.be/simple.css)
[1] https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot
[1]: https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero
[2]: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC...
[3]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0
I’ll contribute to the project or figure out some way to get money to the project team if I like it.
Just a note for others who see this comment as high up as I did.
The beauty of software having a near zero marginal cost is that it only take one person to volunteer their time.
Off topic: it would be really nice if there was a common open API for file sync/share services like Dropbox.
My second thought was: github and Gitlab both have pages which will do this for you.
This is even easier for people who want to do less.
https://twitter.com/Blot__/status/996506149712211968
But I am actually surprised I couldn't quickly find a DIY-Dropbox project.
You can hate PHP but Wordpress is king for non-technical users.
Agreed on WordPress. In fact, I'm about to start working on the second edition of my book, Technical Blogging, and I will still recommend WordPress despite my audience being highly technical. (Of course, I'll discuss the alternatives as well.)
But your insistence that Wordpress (possibly as a static gen) is worth it has me interested. Where would you recommend I pick up a DRM-free copy of the first edition?
The DRM-free first edition is here: https://pragprog.com/book/actb/technical-blogging
Great news!
I read your book in (I think 2012), and found it very useful.
I suspect I'll be buying the second edition.
Wonderful.
Is there a way for me to be notified once it comes out?
What if I enjoy using PHP, am very technical, hate Wordpress and my users tell me it's too hard? :D
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=jekyll http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=hugo http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=pelican 0 CVE entries
Dropbox is the interface in this case.
http://octopress.org/
13 out of 22 are dead.
So am I missing a major value-add over any of the above options that makes the $20 a reasonable cost?
If your time is worth nothing
I don't think I am the only person who is uncomfortable typing in my credit card details on various website, even if you're using Strip APIs.
Github pages is also really simple to use, unless you have problems with git.
But if you use Dropbox, there are several apps that were made specifically to write posts and content in Markdown. When you tap into the Dropbox ecosystem, you gain a lot in ease of use.
https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/acme-v2-production-envir...
Two biggest contenders were wordpress and blogger. I don't want a cms for my blog so blogger made sense, unfortunately it's tied up to google.
Ghost seems compelling, but 20$/month or 5-10$ on other hosting companies is too much, i won't spend hundred(s) every year on my blog. For now at least.
There is markdown editors on F-droid, and static site generators are viable.
I will definitely look into Blot.