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Show HN: Publish a Markdown website in 5 minutes

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Re: Show HN: Publish a Markdown website in 5 minutes

#61

Post by milge »

kristerv wrote: post #50
milge wrote: post #16

I run uBlock and got a message saying the site is down. Disabled it and got it to work. I think one way to differentiate yourself in this kinda area is making it run without any backend tech like jekyll, python, etc. Make it run client-side only. Just my 2 cents.

good point. it's something I myself would also like. I'll have a think about this. I'll also have a look at ublock. I also use it, haven't had problems. Maybe you tried exactly when the site was down. Had overload problems for a few minutes.

I dunno if it will help, besides maybe for some ideas, but when I created my blog a year or so ago, I wanted something like a site generator without running anything on the backend.[1] I ended up doing everything in CSS/HTML/JS/JSON. JSON is used to store posts. I write a post normally using HTML, then use a tool to format it for JSON. Doing it this way allows my static site to run amazon for dirt cheap. Updating the site is just uploading a new JSON file.

I wish I would've developed it further to allow for markup to be used, but other projects always come up.

[1] https://github.com/milge/lilblog

Re: Show HN: Publish a Markdown website in 5 minutes

#62

Post by kristerv »

notahacker wrote: post #14
kristerv wrote: post #2

I have many informational websites like http://www.krister.ee and sometimes I register domains on a whim when I get a really good idea for a website. I decided to create a simple tool to help manage these microsites and in addition to buying a domain I can immediately fill it with demo-content using markdown. Before I get into feature creep (hero image, forms, analytics) I'd like to work on reaching an audience. Prob…

Your target market is somebody that wants to create lots of minimalist websites quickly. (those creating one personal website whose priority is getting things done likely skip the "evaluate best alternatives" step and go straight to Tumblr/Wordpress or their favourite social network.) Unfortunately, apart from polymaths that just want to share their expertise on as many discrete subjects as possible which I'm not con…

thanks for the input. You may be right on this one. We'll see.

Re: Show HN: Publish a Markdown website in 5 minutes

#63

Post by seanwilson »

devoply wrote: post #15
xchaotic wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is some overlap with Jekyll. Personally, Jekyll works better for me atm, as it produces static content, can be hosted for free on github or cheaply on s3 and has a bigger community and backing of github engineering. So perhaps, it's worthwhile to try and figure out jekyll-lite or something like that? For me setting up jekyll was a pain, I had to get ruby, rubygems, jekyll itself and then a manual config…

I personally use Hugo, written in Go rather than Ruby, Jekyll eats up CPU in a very weird way when you run it as a server, don't like my lap on fire after I fire it up. Also love Mkdocs, for static doc creation.

I'm using Jekyll right now and I'm surprised how slow it gets. With only about 20 pages with a few shared includes and a few loops on some pages build times quickly climb to a few seconds. The only advice I'm finding for this issue is to avoid loops and Liquid tags.

Re: Show HN: Publish a Markdown website in 5 minutes

#64

Post by fdgdasfadsf »

kristerv wrote: post #55
agentgt wrote: post #39

My major critique is that the generated sites are needlessly javascript powered. Right when I saw the "Loading" I thought oh no how many assets are going to be downloaded... for just markdown content. I guess I'm just an old web 1.0 guy but I just don't see and understand why everything must be done in a super dynamic way. Hell sometimes I like clicking on a link and watching the browser do the loading as it is confi…

yep, i completely agree. The only reason it's JS heavy is because it's a MVP. If this project turns out well it will end up being a simple HTML with bare-minimum javascript.

How is it easier to go in this direction?

Re: Show HN: Publish a Markdown website in 5 minutes

#65

Post by masukomi »

kristerv wrote: post #55
agentgt wrote: post #39

My major critique is that the generated sites are needlessly javascript powered. Right when I saw the "Loading" I thought oh no how many assets are going to be downloaded... for just markdown content. I guess I'm just an old web 1.0 guy but I just don't see and understand why everything must be done in a super dynamic way. Hell sometimes I like clicking on a link and watching the browser do the loading as it is confi…

yep, i completely agree. The only reason it's JS heavy is because it's a MVP. If this project turns out well it will end up being a simple HTML with bare-minimum javascript.

... the only reason it's complex is that you didn't have time to do something simple?

Re: Show HN: Publish a Markdown website in 5 minutes

#66

Post by kristerv »

blunte wrote: post #17
kristerv wrote: post #2

I have many informational websites like http://www.krister.ee and sometimes I register domains on a whim when I get a really good idea for a website. I decided to create a simple tool to help manage these microsites and in addition to buying a domain I can immediately fill it with demo-content using markdown. Before I get into feature creep (hero image, forms, analytics) I'd like to work on reaching an audience. Prob…

My first thought was Github Pages + Jekyll + a Jekyll template. And then it's been wrapped in a script that has the domain name bonus. Not saying what you're doing isn't a good idea; I'm just not quite sure where the big distinction (and attraction) is. Is it that the process is more shrink-wrapped?

yeah the idea is just to be as simple as possible.

Re: Show HN: Publish a Markdown website in 5 minutes

#67

Post by kristerv »

masukomi wrote: post #65
kristerv wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep, i completely agree. The only reason it's JS heavy is because it's a MVP. If this project turns out well it will end up being a simple HTML with bare-minimum javascript.

... the only reason it's complex is that you didn't have time to do something simple?

Even though the site is simple development time has been severely dropped thanks to choosing a fairly heavy platform.

Re: Show HN: Publish a Markdown website in 5 minutes

#68

Post by kristerv »

thenomad wrote: post #38

Great idea, but the design would have to be significantly more attractive for me to use it for most of the things that would immediately spring to mind. That's a solvable problem, though - grab some top-flight themes with appropriate licenses and you're probably good to go!

Could you perhaps point out some specific details that you find annoying?

Re: Show HN: Publish a Markdown website in 5 minutes

#69

Post by devoply »

hayd wrote: post #56
devoply wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally use Hugo, written in Go rather than Ruby, Jekyll eats up CPU in a very weird way when you run it as a server, don't like my lap on fire after I fire it up. Also love Mkdocs, for static doc creation.

It's interesting you'd use jekyll server rather than just to generating static pages. If I wasn't just using an engine server anyway I could see the appeal of hugo.

I don't use the server. It's just when you are working on a static site it's nice to have it constantly update. Hence the server. Hugo auto-reloads the page every time you save. Makes for a good experience to preview what you are doing. Suppose you could use a specific Markdown editor instead to preview the changes.
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