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Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

brislink.github.io

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Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#11

How secure is this platform compared to say something like Wordpress?

With WordPress, there's always the possibility of your blog being hacked, because it executes queries and there's always the chance for bugs to exist some where in the huge ocean of code. On the other hand, with static blog generators (like specter, octopress, pelican, etc) your generated blog will be static html and as far as I know, there's no way you can really question html's security, simply because security doesn't apply to it. You cannot attack html because it doesn't run queries or anything, it's just static data being pulled from the server and displayed by the browser. So, in the end, the security goes back to your host and how good the machines are configured (when you're using shared hosts).

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#12
post #3

Pelican, Specter, Silvrback...I'm starting to get really confused. Is building your own blogging engine the new rite of passage for the web age, supplanting the practice of building your own text editor? Is it okay if I keep writing post in HTML, rather than REST? Or am I missing out on some awesome set of features? I'd love to know if anyone actually converted to one of these platforms and found themselves writing m…

Oh look another great free tool and another senseless comment that tries to knock it for no reason. You're just writing over-generalized nonsense for the sake of it, most of which doesn't even make sense...

> Is it okay if I keep writing post in HTML, rather than REST?

What?

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#13

How secure is this platform compared to say something like Wordpress?

With WordPress, there's always the possibility of your blog being hacked, because it executes queries and there's always the chance for bugs to exist some where in the huge ocean of code. On the other hand, with static blog generators (like specter, octopress, pelican, etc) your generated blog will be static html and as far as I know, there's no way you can really question html's security, simply because security doe…

Do you lose functionality without queries? I'm assuming static means there is less interactivity, like commenting.

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With WordPress, there's always the possibility of your blog being hacked, because it executes queries and there's always the chance for bugs to exist some where in the huge ocean of code. On the other hand, with static blog generators (like specter, octopress, pelican, etc) your generated blog will be static html and as far as I know, there's no way you can really question html's security, simply because security doe…

Do you lose functionality without queries? I'm assuming static means there is less interactivity, like commenting.

Commenting is a pretty big part of the blogging community. I'd hope it would be included in any blogging platform. But then again there are outside sources like disqus for comments so you can bolt that onto your posts if you feel inclined.

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#15
post #4
post #3

Pelican, Specter, Silvrback...I'm starting to get really confused. Is building your own blogging engine the new rite of passage for the web age, supplanting the practice of building your own text editor? Is it okay if I keep writing post in HTML, rather than REST? Or am I missing out on some awesome set of features? I'd love to know if anyone actually converted to one of these platforms and found themselves writing m…

I think it's the new todo list.

Actually, the todo list is the new blogging engine. Writing a blogging engine as a way to learn a new language has been around since at least the early days of Rails. I remember doing that tutorial back in ~2004.

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#16
Uninteresting: "Use my blog platform! It has the power of node!"

Interesting: "I wrote something new in a way or with tools that I had not used before. Here's what worked, here's what didn't, and here's what I learned."

Unfortunately, this is the former. I'd be interested in reading the latter if you wrote something up about your experience with this.

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With WordPress, there's always the possibility of your blog being hacked, because it executes queries and there's always the chance for bugs to exist some where in the huge ocean of code. On the other hand, with static blog generators (like specter, octopress, pelican, etc) your generated blog will be static html and as far as I know, there's no way you can really question html's security, simply because security doe…

Do you lose functionality without queries? I'm assuming static means there is less interactivity, like commenting.

Nah, just use Disqus for your comments. Octopress includes this by default, probably others as well.

I've been using static blogging for about a year now, it's great. Fast, simple, miss nothing from Blogger or Posterous, don't know about Wordpress never used it, and all your content is stored in your own Github repository.

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With WordPress, there's always the possibility of your blog being hacked, because it executes queries and there's always the chance for bugs to exist some where in the huge ocean of code. On the other hand, with static blog generators (like specter, octopress, pelican, etc) your generated blog will be static html and as far as I know, there's no way you can really question html's security, simply because security doe…

Do you lose functionality without queries? I'm assuming static means there is less interactivity, like commenting.

Compared to WordPress, you definitely do; but think about it, there's lots of stuff in WordPress that a blogger doesn't need. WordPress is not just a blogging platform [anymore]. However, on the other hand, by using static sites you're entering a whole new level of security. But don't fear, for commenting, there's Disqus which is pretty good, and I think it's built into specter as well! Even if not so, adding it is just copying and pasting a couple of lines of code :)

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#19
post #16

Uninteresting: "Use my blog platform! It has the power of node!" Interesting: "I wrote something new in a way or with tools that I had not used before. Here's what worked, here's what didn't, and here's what I learned." Unfortunately, this is the former. I'd be interested in reading the latter if you wrote something up about your experience with this.

Interesting: Use my blog platform! Here is the code!

https://github.com/brislink/specter

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#20

I am asking, in a not snarky but genuinely curious way, what are the advantages of any of these platforms over wordpress?

The most important one to me is not using PHP (THEshittiest programming language ever) and being built upon NodeJS. Also, look at my answer below about the security aspect of it.

I would rather use PHP over JavaScript. I know that puts me in a smallish subset of people here, but I really don't like JavaScript.
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