[HN Gopher] WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a ...
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WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space
on the web
Author : doener
Score : 105 points
Date : 2024-08-15 07:42 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (writefreely.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (writefreely.org)
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| 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.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Explain how they still survive and are the only viable option
| for anyone in the day and age where $5 VPSes are a thing.
| Veen wrote:
| Tens of millions of people want to host a WordPress site and
| very few of them want to deal with setting up a database,
| editing config files, securing a server. Most of them have no
| idea what that stuff means.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Then they want a Wordpress, and not this.
| dingnuts wrote:
| That's why companies like WPEngine exist. This doesn't have
| much to do with the software; non-technical users could use
| a WPEngine like service for WriteFreely, if someone ran
| that service
| nucleardog wrote:
| Shared PHP hosting is a managed service, a VPS is not. Not
| everyone has the skill set to bridge the gap, and it's not
| really economical to hire to fill the gap to support a single
| site (but it is to support hundreds of sites in a shared
| hosting environment).
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| > Shared PHP hosting is a managed service, a VPS is not.
| Not everyone has the skill set to bridge the gap
|
| It has always been very peculiar. You either had very
| stripped off permissions of what you could do: FTP comes to
| mind first, and then you still need to understand how Unix
| permissions work, and then you wish you had SSH; or you get
| SSH with some stripped off permissions, and then you do
| need to have the skills to use the Unix system inside; or
| you find that the underlying PHP/webserver has 6-month-old
| zero days and someone keeps owning all tenants all the
| time, but the sysadmins are prima donnas on power trip who
| know better.
|
| And you are still in a firmly DIY area most of the time,
| with enough footgun to do you harm.
|
| Oh, and if you want a custom domain, welcome to the special
| hell.
|
| Maybe I had bad experiences 15 years ago, but in my
| opinion, they should be called "mismanaged services".
| dingnuts wrote:
| the industry is also mostly dead. non technical users now
| use sites like Wix with a builder. Technical ones get a
| VPS or cloud solution and probably don't want LAMP anyway
|
| The only non technical people using shared hosting now
| are people who paid to have a site built for their small
| business twenty years ago and don't need to update
| anything, so they just keep paying the bills
|
| The whole industry has been on life support for a long
| time. just look at all the brands Endurance has bought
| up. That hasn't happened because all of those hosts were
| making a ton of money
| BeetleB wrote:
| Been using shared hosting for 20 years. It's easily
| easier than VPS.
|
| Not sure what you mean by stripped off permissions. Yes,
| I'm not root, but most VPS providers don't give me root
| access either (at least not for cheap).
|
| SFTP has always worked, and continues to do so.
|
| Of course you need to understand UNIX permissions. You
| also need to understand what a directory is, what a file
| is, etc. It's not asking too much.
|
| I've tried 3 different providers, and they all had SSH
| access. I've not heard of one that doesn't.
|
| The only problems I had with PHP servers is that the
| admins _are doing their job and removing old vulnerable
| versions_. Which is a pain for me but it 's why I pay
| them. The whole point of shared hosting is they're taking
| care of the zero day exploits for me.
|
| Custom domains? Not sure what you mean. Every provider I
| looked at it made it painless to use.
|
| Having a simple LAMP stack is dead simple to use (yes, as
| long as you know basic UNIX). VPS: I suddenly need to set
| up the web server, and manage DOS attacks, etc? _And_
| keep track of all the security vulnerabilities and keep
| upgrading? I don 't want to deal with that pain. With
| shared hosting, I need to "fix" things less than once a
| year. My web apps happily work without my needing to log
| in.
|
| With a VPS, I have to pay _more_ only so that I have to
| do _more work_? No thanks.
| rchaud wrote:
| CPanel simplicity vs a blank slate CLI that doesn't do
| anything before an endless list of "sudo xyz" commands are
| run.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Plenty of people just want something point and click like
| cPanel with one click wordpress installs, email filtering
| options, etc.
| jnsplm wrote:
| I happily pay some money for not maintaining another
| server/service in my private time. 10EUR/month for a managed
| server with ssh, Postgres, MySQL, mail, and backups is worth
| it for me: https://uberspace.de/en/ (not affiliated, just a
| happy customer)
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| There are 26 million software developers in the world [1].
| Maybe 10 times as many people who understand some
| programming. There are over 8 billion people in the world.
|
| How do the remaining people create a blog?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demogr
| aph...
| velcrovan wrote:
| Genuine question, is shared hosting still the go-to option for
| many HN readers when setting up a personal site?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| It is for me...cheap and it works for basic things.
| marpstar wrote:
| To an extent, yes. In my case, I've done a lot of WordPress
| consulting over the past 10 years and I'm grandfathered into
| a very inexpensive shared hosting plan from Site5 that gives
| me WHM access and the ability to create as many sites as I
| want.
|
| Works fine for static sites. Works fine for anything PHP. PHP
| versions are kept up to date.
|
| But the cost of an additional site is effectively cost-free,
| so I'm hosting several small sites for small organizations
| and individuals.
| vidarh wrote:
| Then there's the hosted service at write.as.
| meiraleal wrote:
| Even worse: it has JS. How dare they not make something that
| would run in my 1995 computer?
| xd1936 wrote:
| 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.
| MiscIdeaMaker99 wrote:
| It also speaks ActivityPub, and can thus talk to Mastodon,
| Pixelfed, etc. servers.
| troymc wrote:
| WordPress.com is also based on open-source software (WordPress)
| and can connect to the Fediverse via Activitypub [1]. Similar
| to WriteFreely, there's even a WordPress.com desktop app [2].
| That said, I understand the allure of a simple, minimal,
| distraction-free writing and reading experience.
|
| [1] https://wordpress.com/support/enter-the-fediverse/
|
| [2] https://apps.wordpress.com/desktop/
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I think a lot of people may prefer WriteFreely's Go stack vs.
| WordPresses PHP - for right or wrong reasons.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| why would a writer need to know or care about the tech
| stack
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| 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, nobody needs Fediverse or
| ActivityPub.
| riffic wrote:
| at some point the ActivityPub protocol with its open
| interoperability will develop a sort of critical mass
| with the mainstream and everyone will need it. So you may
| be correct now, "nobody needs Fediverse or ActivityPub"
| but in some near or distant future your claim will need
| adjustment.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| No, but fediverse/activitypub are features that the end-
| users directly use, whereas 'written in language X'
| isn't.
| dmje wrote:
| True. But this is HN so... you know, tech
| thebaer wrote:
| 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/
| flusteredBias wrote:
| How does this compare to bearblog
| cxr wrote:
| 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
| thimabi wrote:
| Besides other differences, Bear Blog does not offer a self-
| hosted solution such as WriteFreely.
| zamubafoo wrote:
| I use this in my homelab for drafting long form thoughts. It's
| nice since it feels more ephemeral than making a page in a wiki
| or making a page that gets rendered and hosted statically.
|
| I used to run Ghost for this, but at some point the pervasive
| push to use Ghost's paid features for an internally hosted blog
| irked me enough to rip it out.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Can you paste images into the editor?
| _neil wrote:
| Wondering the same. It seems like the answer is no but maybe
| it's because I'm not logged in?
| thebaer wrote:
| 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!
| stog wrote:
| Is Snap.as open source too?
| RistrettoMike wrote:
| 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. :)
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(page generated 2024-08-15 23:01 UTC)