[HN Gopher] Show HN: Postcard - Easy way to make a personal website
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Show HN: Postcard - Easy way to make a personal website
Today I'm launching Postcard! I started Postcard when I deleted
most social media, but still wanted a way to keep in touch with
friends and my network. When I worked at Webflow, it became clear
to me that most website builders are way too complex for individual
users. So, I drew inspiration from social media - where all you
need is a couple photos and text fields to get a great site online.
So, I think I've about achieved a site builder that even my Mom
could use. The product seems simple, but there are many under-the-
hood optimizations. There's caching, CDNs, custom domain support,
TLS certificate issuance + management, dynamically-generated open
graph images, image optimizations, email sending, full-text RSS
feed, email reputations, and more. It also uses a couple new
products to make the domain connection process easy. Let me know
if you have any feedback or questions! PS - Rumor is that Twitter
is shutting down Revue. If you want help transferring content and
subscribers over to Postcard, just email me!
Author : philip1209
Score : 85 points
Date : 2022-11-10 16:48 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (postcard.page)
(TXT) w3m dump (postcard.page)
| stolenmerch wrote:
| Honest, good faith question here. One stated goal of building
| this is because you "deleted most social media, but still wanted
| a way to keep in touch with friends and my network." How does
| this solve that? Keeping in touch is not about the web presence,
| it's about the network. How does this work differently than
| something like about.me?
| philip1209 wrote:
| Yes, like the other comment mentions - there's a built-in
| newsletter that also acts like a light blog. Check out how I
| use it on my personal site: https://www.philipithomas.com/
|
| I also custom-generate OpenGraph images for each page and post,
| which makes them look great when shared on social networks. My
| philosophy is that you should be able to write once, then share
| everywhere - which I chat more about in the launch post here:
|
| https://www.contraption.co/news/launching-postcard
| davidbanham wrote:
| This has an email newsletter built in. People can subscribe via
| the site and you can publish newsletters through their back
| end.
| herzigma wrote:
| I had a chance to play with Postcard pre-launch and...it's kind
| of amazing. It's a "just enough" product if all you want is a
| landing page, a way to collect email addresses, and a way to send
| people communications (marketing updates, newsletters, etc.).
|
| The "defaults" are smart: they'll build you a page based on
| public info (I think mine was from Twitter and Gravatar), and
| they focus on a single simple, clean layout. Best of all, it
| takes only a minute or two more to hook it up to an existing
| domain (no futzing with DNS) or buy one yourself.
|
| It took me less than 5 minutes to get https://herzigma.com up and
| running!
|
| Kudos to the team for being super focused and executing to well.
| This is now my go-to recommendation for professional
| websites/landing pages.
| [deleted]
| creeble wrote:
| Weird -- I signed up a few months ago, from what I thought was an
| HN announcement. But search doesn't show anything else here.
|
| Anyway, great little website-maker!
| philip1209 wrote:
| I had mentioned it in a comment a couple months ago, which is
| probably how you found it! But, I hadn't submitted it yet as a
| Show HN yet.
|
| Here was the comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32869408
| fraXis wrote:
| Can you talk a bit more about the tech stack you are using for
| this and how long it took you from the time you started working
| on it until you had it up and running?
| philip1209 wrote:
| Sure!
|
| Tech stack is Rails with Hotwire on the frontend. I'm hosting
| on Render.com, and using their custom domains support to issue
| certificates.
|
| It looks like I had an MVP done in May [1], then spend the
| Summer doing lots of testing and refinement. Speed was a big
| focus - I wanted sites to be ultra-quick. I do this with a mix
| of caching in Memcached, image optimization source sets, CDN,
| and more. Plus, I'm dynamically generating OpenGraph images for
| each page using headless Chrome.
|
| I also use a couple fun technologies for custom domains:
|
| - If you already have a domain - I use https://entri.com to
| connect it, which is a new product that's like Plaid for
| domains
|
| - If you don't have a domain - I use Google Domains Express
| Checkout API [2], which lets you directly purchase a new domain
| and automatically connect it to Postcard
|
| Let me know if you have any other questions!
|
| [1] https://www.philipithomas.com/posts/sharing-a-project-i-
| buil...
|
| [2] https://developers.google.com/domains/express
| EGreg wrote:
| Would you be interested in upselling users to have their own
| community? It's an open source solution that supports events,
| shows, and services (that you can pay to book). See what I
| mean at https://qbix.com
|
| You can click on the example apps in there to see them on
| mobile/desktop.
|
| Discourse is great forum software. And Wordpress is great
| publishing software. Qbix integrates with those too. I can
| see your site to eventually attract a lot of people who want
| to get paid for their products or services.
|
| (However, I realize they can use calendly for booking events,
| zoom for the actual videoconferencing, youtube for videos,
| stripe for selling subscriptions, and maybe a
| Facebook/Telegram/Discord group for customers to connect...
| but then they also wouldn't need Entri since they can make a
| Facebook or Linktree profile.)
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Personal websites should be personalized tho. It's like Facebook
| vs Myspace. Myspace allowed you to easily personalize your page,
| and there were tons of really cool unique pages. Facebook killed
| personal expression; you get to pick a cover photo, a personal
| photo, make posts, and that's it. Then they dominated the world,
| and an entire generation grew up never knowing that the internet
| used to be fun.
| philip1209 wrote:
| I would like to see more personal websites in the world! And,
| the reality is that most site builders are not accessible.
| Single-digit activation rates are pretty common. And, most
| people won't spend thousands of dollars worth of money or time
| to build a personal site.
|
| So - I don't intend for Postcard to be used by everybody. But,
| for people who want a personal site but don't have the time or
| skills to customize a site - I made Postcard!
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I do like the concept. Thanks!
| katsura wrote:
| I think mmm.page [0] is supposed to take care of the fun and
| customization loving niche. It's been on HN before [1], and you
| can even try it without sign up.
|
| [0] https://mmm.page/
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128424
| xhfloz wrote:
| Creator of mmm.page here. Thank you for mentioning the
| project. Imo we need better, more expressive/accessible
| creation tools, before we can have an interesting internet
| filled with true variety (meaning content that isn't gate-
| kept by those who can code, or forced into templates). I've
| spent the past two years on the creation tool side, and it's
| nearing completion, with a beta rolling out soon. (Currently
| it's in alpha.) If you're interested in any part of this,
| feel free to follow me on Twitter (@xhfloz).
|
| A thread with some updates here:
| https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1590113525015674880
|
| Separately, it's great to see more projects in this space.
| Congrats on the launch, philip1209.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Thanks, xhfloz! I hadn't seen mmm.page before, but it looks
| powerful.
| 101008 wrote:
| I'd love something in between MySpace and Twitter. Which would
| be like MySpace but with only text updated and without that
| much personalization.
| ddm379 wrote:
| I don't miss Myspace, but it would be nice to force my visitors
| to hear a ska song on autoplay.
| philip1209 wrote:
| (Source on the Revue rumor:
| https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/twitter-will-shut-d... )
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Website is totally borked for me on iPad Safari. Looks like the
| CSS isn't loading.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Oh no! It's looking ok on my end. Can you try reloading?
| madjam002 wrote:
| This feels like a modern version of Matmice, anyone here remember
| that? :-)
| qiller wrote:
| More like a-bit-more-recent Forrst
| vehemenz wrote:
| - I can tell immediately what the product is and how much it
| costs.
|
| - The profile photo as the favicon is a nice touch.
|
| - Price point looks about right.
|
| How about a dark mode?
| philip1209 wrote:
| Absolutely - dark mode is high on my list! If you subscribe to
| https://updates.postcard.page, I'll post there when it's ready.
| turtlebits wrote:
| The problem I have with these "easy"/low code/push button type of
| services is that they're extremely bloated and generally slow.
| The few I clicked on are all over 1 mb.
|
| I remember seeing some others that built static sites off Notion
| and were even larger.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Hmm, sites shouldn't be slow! Most Postcard pages can get a
| score of 100 on Google's pagespeed test. I do this through a
| mix of caching and image optimizations.
|
| What are you seeing that's slow? I'd love to dig into it!
| extr0pian wrote:
| Agreed. Although not super normie friendly, you can make a
| decent one-pager with some rudimentary HTML knowledge and a few
| lines of CSS to make it pretty. Though I appreciate the
| creator's intention, encouraging people to have their own
| public website separate from closed social media networks like
| LinkedIn.
| suprjami wrote:
| Idea for improvement: show the webpage creation interface without
| needing signup. I want to see what it's like to use without
| making an account. I won't bother with sites which immediately
| ask for login. This doesn't have to be an interactive demo, just
| screenshots are fine.
|
| I suspect I'm not the target audience anyway. I'd rather write a
| custom Jekyll theme and use git to publish with the GitHub Pages
| push hook. This sounds like it's much simpler, maybe something
| like the Blogger interface.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Yes, that's fair feedback! A better site editor is on my queue.
| Thanks for the suggestion.
| suprjami wrote:
| Good luck! Congrats on getting a product to market. This must
| feel pretty huge and exciting for you :)
| ddm379 wrote:
| I second this noting that folks reading here, specifically,
| probably wouldn't benefit the most from it. What I'm thinking
| is it'd be nice to see before referring it to a non-technical
| relative or friend who doesn't even know what git is.
| e-clinton wrote:
| Looks pretty good. Congrats. You selected good examples that make
| it feel relatable for me.
|
| Don't love the price. I'm a big fan of small once/year pricing
| which makes it an impulse purchase... to justify this at $8/month
| I would need to actively be doing something with it
| philip1209 wrote:
| On the checkout page, there is an $80/year option. I just
| didn't want to complicate the marketing page, but it seems like
| I should add the optional yearly pricing there.
| greentea22 wrote:
| $8 a month is ridiculously overpriced.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| nothing is overpriced if someone is willing to pay
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I opened the site and poked around quickly. I thought "Hm...
| simple. Kinda interesting. I wonder if hackernews comments will
| evaluate the utility of it."
|
| It was not until your comment that I realized it's a paid
| product. I never would have imagined that.
| [deleted]
| shahahmed wrote:
| this is cool! i've always struggled supporting custom domains.
| what dns wizardry does one need to do to support custom domains?
| philip1209 wrote:
| I'm using Render.com's custom domain features, which issues TLS
| certificates and manages them using LetsEncrypt!
|
| Two other things that have been nifty are:
|
| I also use a couple fun technologies for custom domains:
|
| - Entri [1] a new product that's like Plaid for domains. So,
| you can normally get the domain set up without copying records
| into the registrar.
|
| - If you don't have a domain - I use Google Domains Express
| Checkout API [2], which lets you directly purchase a new domain
| and automatically connect it to Postcard, also without copying
| records into the registrar.
|
| [1] https://entri.com
|
| [2] https://developers.google.com/domains/express
| shahahmed wrote:
| oh wow thank you!
| jaredcwhite wrote:
| Far be it for me to criticize solo startup products--any
| achievement in this space is immense!
|
| But in general...something that routinely irks me is the lack of
| truly outstanding design/typography in a lot of "start a
| website/blog/whatever in 5 minutes" stuff I see pop up. At least
| this isn't using some crappy monospaced font (that trend is so
| cringe), but...just a basic Tailwind theme isn't all that
| appealing IMHO. I think any indie project to help folks get a
| website online should offer something truly
| exciting/quirky/artistic on the design side so it's not just a
| clone of bland corporate media.
|
| All that aside, congrats on the launch and I hope it's the start
| of good things to come!
| philip1209 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! I plan to offer some alternative
| themes. I chose to spend my time making custom color support
| robust. For instance, there's dynamic code that determines
| which label colors have highest contrast on buttons depending
| on the theme color. So, there's some abstracted complexity
| there.
|
| While the Postcard marketing page looks a little tailwind-y, I
| hope that the individual homepages look more polished and
| distinct. I've been working with a designer to tune everything,
| and I'll continue to make improvements.
| jaredcwhite wrote:
| Awesome to hear that, and again I don't wish to sound like
| I'm criticizing Postcard specifically, more just generically
| shouting into the interwebs. I look forward to seeing more
| themes down the road!
| rambambram wrote:
| I personally like the sites/blogs with a crappy monospace font,
| as long as they have something interesting to share with the
| world, preferably by RSS feed.
|
| But I do agree that websites with an artistic touch in the
| interface are more than welcome. For my own website project it
| was a constant battle choosing between some artistic freedom
| and expression on one hand, and making it useful and easy on
| the other.
|
| In the past, I made what I call the Quick Design module
| (https://try.hellowebsite.online/quickdesign/) where users
| could easily click together a goodlooking website design. They
| layout is always the same, but a preselected or random
| combination of colors and other settings gives some very nice
| results. I definitely would love to explore this even more in
| the future.
| [deleted]
| last_responder wrote:
| Just signed up. I like the simplicity. I currently use Cloudflare
| pages for my personal site and I like the idea of using this in
| stead since I can fire up anything I have a make a quick post.
| Price is in a good spot for my taste. Quick question -
|
| - Do you have any plans for sub-pages? I like to keep my resume /
| CV handy on my personal site and don't really see a way to do
| this cleanly.
|
| - I don't see a way to edit or delete a post.
|
| - Posts with images see to show the raw filename like
| [[img111.jpg]] . Will there ever be thumbnail previews?
| philip1209 wrote:
| That's great!
|
| Sub-pages are something I'm considering. Some users have linked
| out to a Notion. Also, the site supports embedded files - so
| you could even embed a PDF on the homepage.
|
| Would you mind emailing me the formatting of the page you
| expect? Resumes formatting can get complex, so I want to make
| sure I support what you're envisioning.
| last_responder wrote:
| Will do ! Thank you . Wanted to let you know I am now a
| paying customer. Cloudflare auth worked perfectly.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Excellent, thanks so much!
|
| The DNS integration tool is is https://entri.com - they're
| doing a great job.
| fraXis wrote:
| Nice work! Account signup was fast, and the interface was very
| easy intuitive and easy to use.
|
| A nice feature would be for the ability to process/save the
| collection of email addresses to my ConvertKit account (and have
| the email signup confirmation sent to the user sent from
| ConvertKit itself).
|
| What service do you use now to handle the email signups (and send
| confirmations) on our Postcard page?
|
| Edit: Sorry I just realized, that the email signup is for sending
| out updates when I update my Postcard page.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Hey, great feedback!
|
| I plan to add a Zapier integration to Postcard so that you can
| connect signups to wherever you want. (And, if you want to
| import your Converkit account to Postcard - just email me!)
|
| I was also using Convertkit for a personal newsletter, and got
| tired of using a business tool for an individual use case. So,
| the Postcard posts do send out via email. Posts also show up on
| the site - so that you can share it on any other networks you
| want.
|
| Thanks for the feedback - seems like I can make these details
| more clear in the app, including how posts work!
| recuter wrote:
| I clicked the 'Make Your Website' CTA immediately hit the signup
| form and promptly bounced. That is not to say this thing won't be
| successful, just that I am clearly not the target audience.
|
| It might be worth it to expose a way to try it out and explain
| why I should use it over the many other ones like it. Or not.
| Whatever converts better.
|
| But if not on the website itself at least tell us these things
| here in the Show HN :)
|
| My question: whom are you targeting? And how will you get at 'em?
| [deleted]
| philip1209 wrote:
| Hey! Yeah, some site builders don't require you to create an
| account to try the product. I take a different approach so that
| the site is mostly pre-filled by the time you see it.
|
| I try to address this by linking to a bunch of Postcard example
| sites on the homepage.
|
| For why to use Postcard - I'm setting out to build "dependable
| tech tools" [1]. I think we need more unitasker applications
| that just do a good job, and just stick around. And, personal
| websites are something that I think more people should have -
| but, that no big VC-backed startup will ever focus on because
| it's a small market.
|
| Postcards themself are a great personal website that's well-
| designed and has a nicely integrated newsletter. The newsletter
| posts also get featured on the site, and there's features like
| full-text RSS built-in.
|
| [1] https://www.contraption.co/news/introducing-contraption-co
| recuter wrote:
| > I try to address this by linking to a bunch of Postcard
| example sites on the homepage.
|
| I think I've developed a sort of blindness to the social
| proof thing with <human head in a circle and positive text
| blurb> so it took me a bit to realize those are clickable
| examples of actual user websites and not just endorsements.
| Makes sense.
|
| > but, that no big VC-backed startup will ever focus on
| because it's a small market.
|
| A ton have come and gone like:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous (It even starts with
| a P, ha, time is a flat circle)
|
| I believe it had custom domains at some point and a built in
| newsletter/rss and the thing that made it popular at the time
| was that you could email it your posts.
|
| You should copy that feature. :)
|
| Cool, and good luck.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Thanks! Postcard already supports embedded posts, a
| newsletter, and even full-text RSS. Check it out in action
| on my personal site: https://www.philipithomas.com
| rroot wrote:
| I came to say exactly this.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Interesting that I can immediately tell it's a Tailwind website,
| with the colors, Inter font, dot grid background etc.
|
| Regarding the content itself, looks good. Looks like it's
| following the classic $8/m model for hooking up a custom domain,
| like every other site builder.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I mean it's a lot more Tailwind than the colors, font, and
| background. Some of the site is almost byte-for-byte HTML
| straight from Tailwind UI components such as:
|
| https://tailwindui.com/components/marketing/sections/feature...
|
| Which is the whole point of Tailwind UI, of course! It's a
| great product, but like Twitter Bootstrap before it is at risk
| of becoming a victim of its own ubiquity.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Totally fair! I also haven't spent much time polishing the
| marketing page - as you start to use the app, you'll see that
| a lot of the dashboard components are more custom.
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