Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Postleaf – Open source blogging platform

postleaf.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 56 posts

Re: Show HN: Postleaf – Open source blogging platform

#41

Post by johnchristopher »

jbob2000 wrote: post #16
claviska wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that other platforms suck, it's just that so many pop up that don't address what I think people really want: something that's easy to use, nice to look at, and not bloated. A lot of newcomers are missing key features, aren't aesthetically pleasing, or are geared towards devs. Postleaf tries to find that perfect balance :)

I mean, you've described vanilla WordPress and most vanilla blogging platforms (easy to use, nice to look at, and not bloated). It's only when you need functionality outside of the vanilla features that things get hairy. If I need to extend PostLeaf in any way, it will probably end up a bloated ugly mess too, no?

Maybe blogging platform weren't meant to be extended in the end. Like, don't use woocommerce, use a blog and an online shop instead and ask for both being accessible with the same credentials.

Re: Show HN: Postleaf – Open source blogging platform

#42

Post by claviska »

xxdesmus wrote: post #31

"Postleaf requires a web server running PHP 5.5+, MySQL 5.5.3+, and Apache." ...nope, sorry. Web server agnostic or I won't even consider you these days.

It doesn't require Apache, but the installer currently only supports Apache. Easy enough to run it on Nginx or another server.

Re: Show HN: Postleaf – Open source blogging platform

#43

Post by claviska »

aaronpk wrote: post #36

This looks nice. Would you consider adding Micropub support ( https://www.w3.org/TR/micropub/ ) so that someone could use this editor with their own blog backend? For example, I have my own software that runs my website, and I've spent a lot of time making it work exactly how I want. But, I'm not the best at building editing interfaces, so I have avoided building an inline posting interface. I would much rather use a…

Definitely open to learning more about it. You're welcome to post a feature request on community.postleaf.org so we can discuss it in-depth :)

Re: Show HN: Postleaf – Open source blogging platform

#44

Post by claviska »

jbob2000 wrote: post #16
claviska wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that other platforms suck, it's just that so many pop up that don't address what I think people really want: something that's easy to use, nice to look at, and not bloated. A lot of newcomers are missing key features, aren't aesthetically pleasing, or are geared towards devs. Postleaf tries to find that perfect balance :)

I mean, you've described vanilla WordPress and most vanilla blogging platforms (easy to use, nice to look at, and not bloated). It's only when you need functionality outside of the vanilla features that things get hairy. If I need to extend PostLeaf in any way, it will probably end up a bloated ugly mess too, no?

A lot of people would argue that vanilla WP is still somewhat bloated and not super nice to look at. These are subjective statements, sure, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It never hurts to have an alternative. Competition encourages innovation :)

Re: Show HN: Postleaf – Open source blogging platform

#45

Post by claviska »

johnchristopher wrote: post #41
jbob2000 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you've described vanilla WordPress and most vanilla blogging platforms (easy to use, nice to look at, and not bloated). It's only when you need functionality outside of the vanilla features that things get hairy. If I need to extend PostLeaf in any way, it will probably end up a bloated ugly mess too, no?

Maybe blogging platform weren't meant to be extended in the end. Like, don't use woocommerce, use a blog and an online shop instead and ask for both being accessible with the same credentials.

I think a blogging platform should have that capability, but we've grown accustomed to "themes" being frameworks and plugins being apps. My ultimate goal is to design themes, not develop them, and to write plugins that extend various parts of the app, not pile entire new apps on top of it.

Re: Show HN: Postleaf – Open source blogging platform

#47

Post by claviska »

dbgllm wrote: post #35

Reminds me of the Ghost blogging platform, tho there's inline editing for non-devs. Neat, competition is fun.

Postleaf was definitely inspired in parts by Ghost, although no code was borrowed. I like Ghost, there are things I think they do really well.

Re: Show HN: Postleaf – Open source blogging platform

#48

Post by claviska »

daenney wrote: post #37
claviska wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not inferring that others do! ;)

You kind of are though. You could've gone with a whole slew of different things but by saying "that doesn't suck" it implies that other things that are used for blogging do. It doesn't have to imply that but that's the connection most people will make and why we use phrases like that. You wouldn't go with "that like all the other solutions doesn't suck either", that doesn't set you apart in any way. If you want to di…

That's true, and it was a bad decision in hindsight. In my defense, I've submitted to HN before and never really saw results after dwelling for an hour over the title. I just typed something and hit submit, what luck, eh? Thanks for looking!

Re: Show HN: Postleaf – Open source blogging platform

#49

Post by claviska »

daveloyall wrote: post #39
claviska wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

Your question is bait? Maybe you are suggesting that PHP+MySQL apps aren't universally terrible. In this case, please state that and defend it. Or you are unaware that PHP+MySQL apps have a history of being terrible. In this case, I am not sure what to say.

Not bait, just curious as to why you'd say that and didn't want to make any assumptions.

Sure, I could have built Postleaf in Node, for example. It's all the rage these days. I even considered it, but then I considered my end users who (sadly) still have trouble setting up a basic PHP app on a shared LAMP box.

I think part of the allure with Postleaf is the ease of use from the initial install all the way to publishing a post. If I had chosen Node, most of my target users wouldn't have been able to install it. Sure, I could have taken advantage of that to offer paid services that do it for them, but that's not why I developed Postleaf.

The choice to use PHP wasn't me sitting on a platform high horse, it's just what's available pretty much everywhere TODAY. It's also convenient that they're already familiar with the stack. That may change in the future, and Postleaf will pivot accordingly, hence why themes use Handlebars, not Twig or another platform-specific template system.

That PHP+MySQL apps are universally terrible is very subjective. You can build shitty apps with any language :)

Re: Show HN: Postleaf – Open source blogging platform

#50

Post by claviska »

macandcheese wrote: post #15

What's really needed is a WYSIWYG GUI editor that exports all (custom and editable) fields to JSON, so you can use something like Middleman to generate a static site based on that content. This way, anytime someone updates and saves content through the GUI, a script will trigger and re-build your static site based on the new JSON file, and publish to s3. To completely decouple the editing experience (and those who cr…

I think what you're referring to is called a "headless CMS", which is an interesting idea and something we can discuss as the project evolves. It may not be a good candidate for core, but a plugin that outputs the data in the format you're looking for wouldn't be that hard to build (once plugins land).

For example, the existing internal API has a backup method that exports all MySQL tables to JSON files. The heavy lifting is already done for you. (It also wraps all your themes and uploads into a TAR along with the JSON files so you have a real, full backup — not just your post content.)

I'd love to explore this more down the road :)

Post reply on HN