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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

#81

Post by c0nfused »

hayd wrote: post #51
agentgt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's completely fine to use JavaScript here. It would be nice to have instant page pushes. I'm not sure I follow on the instant page pushes. Are you talking about a little dialog that pops up and "says a new version of the page" kind of thing? Second is there features you saw that required Javascript (as it appeared to me most could be done with CSS)? And no I don't think it is "completely fine" to use Java…

One solution is to just send all the linked pages on first load (all the markdown content, so when transitioning they only load images, or of seen before get them "from cache").

Typically this behaviour, page prefetch, is built into a modern browser. Thus, writing it yourself is probably not a great improvement.

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

#82

Post by kaishiro »

user5994461 wrote: post #77
kristerv wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The development time has been severely increased thanks to a poorly choosen and heavy platform. A Minimum Viable Product could be done in a few minutes with pandoc, a popular and standard tool that supports markdown to html conversation out of the box. Add a few CSS styles and here you go! Awesome looking static pages, with 0 javascript whatsoever, based on proven battle-tested software ;)

Like any MVP, time to market almost solely depends on your knowledge of the tooling. If the OP is familiar with what they've used, then I'm comfortable trusting that it's faster for them instead of having to learn something new.

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

#84

Post by bonzini »

user5994461 wrote: post #77
kristerv wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The development time has been severely increased thanks to a poorly choosen and heavy platform. A Minimum Viable Product could be done in a few minutes with pandoc, a popular and standard tool that supports markdown to html conversation out of the box. Add a few CSS styles and here you go! Awesome looking static pages, with 0 javascript whatsoever, based on proven battle-tested software ;)

Or just use jekyll. But it seems to purport to be different from jekyll, so I am not sure.

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

#85

Post by edw519 »

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.

Thank you for this, kristerv.

At first I agreed with many of the other posters, that this just had more overhead than it needed, so I didn't take it seriously.

But when I saw this comment, I got it.

It's an MVP! You launched it before it was ready, but not before you were ready. Which is exactly what we're supposed to do. Grow a thick skin, share it, and take your lumps. This way, your baby will grow up much faster than it would have it you went it alone.

Many of us here, including myself, are too chicken to do that as early as we should. Thank you for showing the way.

Respect.

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

#86

Post by kyledrake »

Congrats on the launch! I had an initial thought of coming up with a site like this, but decided that providing an open HTML platform was best (hence, https://neocities.org). But I'm happy someone finally scratched the itch.

Random thoughts:

You're going to want to use subdomains for the sites, otherwise all sites are sharing the same domain security model, and you're going to run into problems when (not if, when) a site gets reported for abuse/phishing/spam/ect issues. Path origin security support is years out.

While you're on subdomains, get a wildcard SSL cert and default to it. Neocities started without SSL, and next month I'm paying the price for that sin - we're switching to default SSL and unfortunately it's likely going to break a lot of sites. It's not really a choice anymore, given the political climate and the upcoming pagerank dock from Google.

If the site explodes in popularity, I'm happy to give advice. There's a lot of problems I've solved relating to running a massive web hosting service for a lot of people. Some of it required months of research and some serious firehose drinking to figure out.

Lastly, don't be afraid to ask for money - at least $5/mo, if you go lower you're just crop sharing for the credit card companies. At a bare minimum, throw up a PayPal donation button. I've learned that if you provide a useful service, people will pay you, even if there's an excellent free option. I'd rather pay a small amount to help sustain a service than have it fall apart from lack of funds and/or dev interest. That's a good thing and it's worth something.

To illustrate the importance of at least a donation button: HN users donated over $4000 to us on launch, and I ran the site on that budget for almost two years. Site possibly wouldn't exist today without HN support. Sometimes the comment sections betray this (I'm including myself in this statistic), but kind hearted, wonderful people lurk here.

Good luck.

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

#87

Post by user5994461 »

kaishiro wrote: post #82
user5994461 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The development time has been severely increased thanks to a poorly choosen and heavy platform. A Minimum Viable Product could be done in a few minutes with pandoc, a popular and standard tool that supports markdown to html conversation out of the box. Add a few CSS styles and here you go! Awesome looking static pages, with 0 javascript whatsoever, based on proven battle-tested software ;)

Like any MVP, time to market almost solely depends on your knowledge of the tooling. If the OP is familiar with what they've used, then I'm comfortable trusting that it's faster for them instead of having to learn something new.

  apt-get install pandoc
  # convert from markdown to html
  pandoc -f markdown -t html article.md
Just to be clear. Pandoc is a rather trivial command line tool. It's not comparable to learning a framework or a toolset.

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

#88

Post by desireco42 »

kyledrake wrote: post #86

Congrats on the launch! I had an initial thought of coming up with a site like this, but decided that providing an open HTML platform was best (hence, https://neocities.org ). But I'm happy someone finally scratched the itch. Random thoughts: You're going to want to use subdomains for the sites, otherwise all sites are sharing the same domain security model, and you're going to run into problems when (not if , when )…

This part about HN people is heart-warming :).

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

#89

Post by Rabidgremlin »

If you want to roll your own, I have a Docker image that pulls Markdown out of git, runs Hugo over it and pushes the site to an S3 bucket. Also works with Bitbucket pipelines so you can get a site rebuild with a simple git push: https://github.com/rabidgremlin/hugo-s3

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

#90

Post by kaishiro »

user5994461 wrote: post #87
kaishiro wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like any MVP, time to market almost solely depends on your knowledge of the tooling. If the OP is familiar with what they've used, then I'm comfortable trusting that it's faster for them instead of having to learn something new.

apt-get install pandoc # convert from markdown to html pandoc -f markdown -t html article.md Just to be clear. Pandoc is a rather trivial command line tool. It's not comparable to learning a framework or a toolset.

But that's exactly my point. The presumption is that he didn't learn a new framework or toolset - he already knew it.
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