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WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space on the web

writefreely.org

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Re: WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space on the web

#31

Post by thebaer »

xd1936 wrote: post #4

From what I understand, Mastodon is to Twitter as WriteFreely is to WordPress.com/Medium/Blogger/etc. Fediverse-aware, open-source, with a flagship SaaS hosted instance available at https://write.as . If microblogging hadn't fried my brain and I was interested in spinning up a longform blog, this is the software I would choose.

Yep, that's exactly it! (Creator here.)

Would also note it works pretty well for microblogging -- here's an example (with some custom styling)[0]. Small posts with a single paragraph also get federated out as `Note`s instead of `Article`s, which makes them show up on Mastodon pretty nicely.

[0]: https://write.as/updates/

Re: WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space on the web

#32

Post by dmje »

spencerchubb wrote: post #26
doublepg23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people may prefer WriteFreely’s Go stack vs. WordPresses PHP - for right or wrong reasons.

why would a writer need to know or care about the tech stack

True. But this is HN so… you know, tech

Re: WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space on the web

#34

Post by 4ndrewl »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #27
spencerchubb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would a writer need to know or care about the tech stack

It’s all aesthetic experiences. Some people care, so it matters. I know what you’re getting at and the world you want to live in. Listen, why do people care if some story they read was written by a bot, for example? The people reading Reddit’s top creative writing venues (AITA comes to mind) clearly don’t know and don’t care. But many people do care. It’s arbitrary. It’s just aesthetic. Nobody needs this stuff, nobod…

No, but fediverse/activitypub are features that the end-users directly use, whereas 'written in language X' isn't.

Re: WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space on the web

#35

Post by RistrettoMike »

I tried WriteFreely (and some of their other stuff) a year or so ago, but found it to be a little too limited for what I was trying to achieve with my personal sites (as a layman/non-web-dev). Ended up using https://Blot.im/ very happily, with my photosite being the personal example I've put the most time into: https://ristrettoshots.com/

Edit pages mostly in regular markdown (+ a few simple Blot-specific tags), drop some images into a Dropbox folder, done. Site built. :)

Re: WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space on the web

#36

Post by stog »

thebaer wrote: post #33
IshKebab wrote: post #25

Can you paste images into the editor?

As long as they're hosted somewhere on the internet, you can add images with regular Markdown. Built-in support for photo management is in the pipeline though!

Is Snap.as open source too?

Re: WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space on the web

#37

Post by cxr »

flusteredBias wrote: post #13

How does this compare to bearblog

WriteFreely

- is AGPL-licensed

- supports themes

- requires JS (to post)

- supports ActivityPub

Bearblog:

- is MIT-licensed

- doesn't support themes

- doesn't require JS

- uses RSS/Atom for syndication

Re: WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space on the web

#39

Post by cyberax »

I tried WriteFreely, I really tried. I even wrote a bi-directional synchronizer for it, so you can write locally in Obsidian and sync posts to Write.as: https://github.com/Cyberax/writeas-sync

But I gave up on it. Sorry. It's not a viable project.

It's backed by a one-man team, and so the support is unresponsive. The API is bad, and they impose ridiculously low rate limits. Like, less than 0.1 request per second. I understand the need to protect against bots, but hey, Cloudflare exists, and I'm paying for a subscription.

I then tried to self-host it. There is no official Docker support, but I cobbled it up. It works ok-ish, but the open source version is NOT the same as the one running on Write.as! For example, there is no support for drag&drop image uploads.

I then looked at the source code, and it's just a mess. There is no layering, the view makes direct requests to the database, and there is very little customization potential. For example, you can't even insert a script reference at the bottom of the page, without patching the source code.

Re: WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space on the web

#40

Post by immibis »

velcrovan wrote: post #7
vouaobrasil wrote: post #2

Looks interesting but it won't work on many shared servers on which the only option is PHP/SQL due to it being written in Go.

Genuine question, is shared hosting still the go-to option for many HN readers when setting up a personal site?

For me, no way. Not when VPSes scale down to $3.50/month.
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