Ask HN: Should I open-source my bootstrapped product? - <AUTHOR> My product is a scraping orchestration platform (www.yielder.io) About two months ago, after two years of work, I finally got to the point where the product is ready for prime time.
Some feedback I got was that I might get more legitimacy / traction / business if I go open-source. Finding customers is hard and for a technical guy the next steps are not obvious, so I started considering it.<p>Should I open source my product? if so under which license? <comment><USER3> If your main goal is to gain customers, then I don't think open sourcing is the right strategy. It will be a lot of work and I'm not convinced it will actually net you any customers.

Your efforts would probably be better spent on more traditional marketing tactics like advertising, attending related conferences, creating case studies, etc.

Also, it looks like you are targeting Enterprise customers. Enterprise sales cycles are long and arduous, you might want to chase smaller customers while you work out the kinks. You might want to consider involving a partner with Enterprise sales experience.

</comment><comment><USER4> [random internet advice]

When actual paying customers are driving a move to open source, then it might be worth spending time on picking a license. Right now, there's no way of determining what license is most appropriate for customers when there are not any.

If a lead (potential customer) says you might get more legitimacy if you open source, the legitimacy of that lead correlates to the size of check they have written you before the suggestion. If there is no check, "open source it" is just "no." To put it another way, when a lead asks for something the value of that request should be measured by the amount they are willing to pay to have you implement with the expectation that you will implement it.

Yes, finding customers is hard. It is harder than open sourcing. That's what makes open sourcing attractive, it's easy. It seems like work. But it isn't. Without sales to actual customers there isn't a business. Without users, there isn't a community.

The next step is go out and ask for money. When people say no, it may mean that the product isn't valuable. It may mean that you haven't identified the right potential customers. It may mean that you haven't talked to enough people. It may mean that you have not asked that person enough times.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER5> ScrapingHub was something I was interested in - as an example of opensource project which the founders used as a base to build a company. Does it help to use their model for you - [https://blog.scrapinghub.com/2015/03/16/history-of- scrapingh...](https://blog.scrapinghub.com/2015/03/16/history-of-scrapinghub)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm considering doing the same. My rational is that it's a developer(ment) focused framework.

Are there other open source projects that are trying to be the same? Could you become the defacto open source option? How easy would it be to replace your product vs. tool? Can you keep some closed source for Enterprise / on-prem?

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's an article that may contribute to your decision: Open Source (Almost) Everything.

[http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source- everyth...](http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source- everything.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> I think there are many other things you can do before going open source - <USER2> site needs pricing, in browser demo etc.

Also is your code ready for open source, do you have great docs etc..

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, but the product is not SaaS at this time, its on-prem, so pricing is not so relevant..

Docs & other resources will come along with open-sourcing the code

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > I might get more legitimacy / traction / business if I go open-source.

What is the reasoning behind this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not based out of SF (where I hear it's much easier to get noticed) and my network here in Israel is not so strong that a blog post makes any splash, my concern is that just from looking at the landing page even a technical prospects may think this is nothing fancy. By open sourcing it I hope to get the technical crowd to find out its actually a very advanced piece of software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > if so under which license?

GPLv3 or later if it's a program that runs on a user's computer.

AGPLv3 or later if it's a program that runs over a network (webapp on a server).</comment>


Trump Slams Apple for Refusing to Unlock Suspected Shooter's iPhones - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/trump-slams-apple-for-refusing-to-unlock-suspected-shooters-iphones/151874/ <comment><USER2> I don't think Trump understands Security. Phone security or National Security.

If you can do it to the Shooters phone, A motivated shooter can also do it to your phone.

Works both ways.</comment>


Damn You, Microsoft Word. Damn You. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.amir.rachum.com/post/23419308926/damn-you-microsoft-word-damn-you

<comment><USER2> My biggest Word WTF was when I had edited about a page of text, and went away for a new cup of coffee. When I came back the document was only showing Wingdings-like characters. And when I press the cursor keys it crashed.

After that time I always go into the settings and force it to make proper .bak files.

I've seen the sales people periodically manually save to a separate .rtf because Word crashes and trashes the document and the auto-save so often for them.

After decades and zillions of money, why isn't that piece of software amongst the most solid software there is?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I would accept this kind of crap from a new and innovative startup, but Word exists for about 20 years. Jesus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's not just Word. Lots of microsoft programs have modal dialogs that lock out other open windows. Outlook is the one that give me the most trouble.

<comment><USER4> Excel is good at this too (2007). Edit a cell (F2) and then at the same time try open a different spreadsheet..

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That is your biggest problem with word?

How is that: I imported a simple Excel diagram, tried to resize it - and Word crashed. No problem, Word creates backups, right? Only problem: When Word opens the backup... it crashes. And suddenly I didn't have any working version of the file anymore...

(git helped me out, thankfully, but I don't know how my parents would have handled that...)

<comment><USER6> so it's Word's problem you did not bother to hit CTRL-S and save periodically?

<comment><USER7> You're being down voted because you overlooked the fact that the parent poster is unable to open the document at all. We're not talking lost changes here, we're talking about not being able to open the document at all, so not only did he lose the changes since the last save, but he had to go to a backup (git version) and recover the document from there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's easy to belittle something when you don't know the solution.

Go to 'Window' -> 'New Window'

Open as many Windows and Modal Dialogs you want.

And as I can see from all the jokers who agree with your opinion - none of them actually 'tried' to find a solution either.

<comment><USER9> I believe this trick only works if you know apriori that you want a new window; not after the fact.

What infuriates me is the dual-level modal. You are in a document. You do something that opens a dialog (call it D1), it opens another dialog (D2) for whatever reason. You want to see something behind D1. You CANNOT MOVE IT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> use LaTex

<comment><AUTHOR> As I pointed out, I prefer LyX (which is a LaTeX graphical frontent).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Took your advice, successfully! Let's try it again. - <AUTHOR>

My start-up is www.talkburst.com - review anyone by name and location. Categories such as "Professors & Teachers" and "Lawyers & Attorneys" allow easy reviewing of professionals - but reviewing your neighbor or co-worker is okay too!
In the last thread, the most valuable advice I was given was that you didn't want to sort through categories with hundreds of thousand reviews, sorted by last name.
I created a "custom feed" or "custom homepage" thing. Once you customize one, which consists of choosing the locations you care about and categories you care about, the homepage will display the latest reviews in your areas of interest.
What do you think of it?
Let's hear what you think it needs next. <comment><USER2> Have you checked out the draconian libel laws in the UK? They apply if the "libel" can be read from the UK.

How about the privacy laws in Italy - check what just happened to some Google Execs...

This could end up as a great "get rich quick" scheme for the lawyers.

Sorry to come on as a dampener but this is risky territory.

<comment><USER3> This is really something that will need to be adressed (fixed) in the near future before it gets out of hand and really impacts our industry in a negative manner.

Things like this seem to give a small minority of people anywhere on the globe the ability to basicaly terrorize and shake down companies and people in our industry.

I beleive that some kind of international free-harbor provision would be benificial to the internet and allow it to continue to grow freely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just don't let them terrorize you. Stand your ground, fight the fight.

I've had several very successful websites and I was always dealing with people and companies trying to "shake me down." I think it's just part of the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do I have to create an acccount to see "more"?

I clicked on the "more" link for entrepreneurs, then, on the next page, had to choose the checkbox for entrepreneurs and click continue. You should automatically recognize which "more" link I clicked. Save the category checking for people who come to that page wanting to do a search or browse by category.

On the next page I had to put in two locations. I'd go with one and let the user add another one if they want.

Then I was asked to create an account. Why? I just want to browse your site. I stopped at this point, so it just became a waste of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> It used to recognize which one you chose, then it showed you the first page of N amount of results, which for some categories is over 200,000 reviews, in alphabetical order. I got advice from HN'ers that it needed to be changed :)

The account simply narrows down the results for you based on your selections of categories and locations. You _can_ enter just one location and it will still work, it just doesn't tell you that.

The account is barely an account, just pick a username and e-mail address, click, your password is in your inbox. Simply used to remember your preferences since it's pretty heavily customized (narrowed down) for you, to be relevant.

Now that I've explained it a bit more, do you have any suggestions?

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't require account creation until the user wants to post something. Store their temporary preferences in the session.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What if people do not want to be reviewed?

<comment><AUTHOR> It works the same way as Citysearch or Yelp, in that aspect, anyone can review you. Members need to be aware of their local laws when writing potentially libelious or hateful statements - you open yourself up to lawsuits if you go on the site and start stirring up lies.

It's pretty easy to make your point, even a negative one, without being libelious/hateful/rude, which is the way it should be done.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://www.talkburst.com></comment>


Show HN: Optimage – Advanced image optimization tool - <AUTHOR> https://getoptimage.com <comment><USER2> As far as I can tell, imageoptim eats this project's lunch. The examples given on optimage's own benchmark page show imageoptim clocking in at around half the total filesize of optimage for the entire benchmark.

Even in the specific examples that are supposed to count against imageoptim -- the destructive chroma sampling, the 'broken gradient' (I can't see it), the orange sneakers (imageoptim's looks better and not overblown colors), or the rotated beach scene -- imageoptim is dramatically smaller on all of them. It puts up a 76k file vs 141k, a 5k vs 14k, a 72k vs 177k, and a 750k vs 1340k.

Halving the filesize for such small differences is exactly what I want in an optimizer.

My biggest complaint with imageoptim is that it's primarily a mac tool, with only a secondary online interface for the windows/linux crowd. But then this project has exactly the same flaw, so there's no gain there either.

<comment><AUTHOR> > imageoptim clocking in at around half the total filesize of optimage

Only that ImageOptim ruined most of JPEG images while PNG images are ~7.5% bigger.

> imageoptim is dramatically smaller on all of them

There are myriad ways to make them _much_ smaller at the cost of visual quality: blurring, posterization, rescaling, etc. The question is where to stop. With visually lossless, you can apply these techniques in advance and have predictable results. For example, Optimage does choose chroma sampling when it is not destructive to original.

> the 'broken gradient' (I can't see it)

It can be seen on a calibrated display, sorry.

> the orange sneakers (imageoptim's looks better and not overblown colors)

Original colors are "overblown" [1].

> or the rotated beach scene

It is _rotated_.

[1] [https://webkit.org/blog-files/color-gamut/](https://webkit.org/blog- files/color-gamut/)

<comment><USER3> > It can be seen on a calibrated display, sorry.

Which is probably what about 99% of all internet users are sitting in front of, right?

This is just a misleading, weird attempt at marketing for a tool I expect to not generate any meaningful sales. To claim that ImageOptim ruins "most JPEGs" is just irresponsible and annoyingly false.

Given the differences in quality vs. compression, ImageOptim and the other free tools actually appear to define far more realistic results for real world use apart from pleasing owners of $3000+ hardware-calibrated soft-proofing displays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > First tool for automatic image compression that just works

If you search "image compression tool" on Google you'll have millions of hits of products that do the exact same thing. You even list a bunch of competitors on your website. What makes this the first?

<comment><USER5> We've updated the submitted tagline from "First tool for automatic image compression that just works" to one from the page itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why? There's an extensive benchmark [1], also seen on the homepage, that proves it is the first tool that does not break images like other state-of- the-art tools, i.e. fits the submitted tagline.

On a side note, HN voting system is horribly broken. I submitted the link in the morning and when I hit the bed it somehow got attention.

[1] [https://getoptimage.com/benchmark](https://getoptimage.com/benchmark)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FYI in firefox (62.0.2) some 'before' images look different.

In chrome they look identical. Perhaps the source images included gamma information?

CRS-4 Mission Launch by SpaceX (less contrast, less color saturation in 'before')

Jellyfish photo by 贝莉儿 NG (much lower blue saturation in 'before')

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, some of the source images are tagged with ICC color profiles.

It looks like Firefox still does not treat untagged images as sRGB and the difference on wide-gamut monitors may be noticeable.

That was a matter of an option switch. It should be fixed now. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pedantic quibble: shrinking is _optimizing for size_. I deal with a lot of shitty images and size is the last thing I care about. I'm sure it does a great job at making things smaller but that's not the only kind of optimization there is.

</comment><comment><USER8> Shameless plug: [https://recompressor.com](https://recompressor.com)

Does something very similar, but gives you a full trade off graph and also supports SVG and is free.

(I'm one of the creators of the site)

</comment><comment><USER9> I currently use ImgBot[1] to optimize all my assets in my GitHub repo. Works well.

[1] [https://github.com/marketplace/imgbot](https://github.com/marketplace/imgbot)

</comment><comment><USER10> Off-topic, but at the bottom of the page there is this quote from Jay Walker at TED 2008:

> "It takes the energy in one lump of coal to move 1 MB of information across > the net."

I wonder if it's still true today, 10 years later.

<comment><USER11> No. I'm skeptical that it was true then, for reasonable values of "lump."

One lump of coal: 25 grams

(Per [https://books.google.com/books?id=HLFJAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA5-PA20&l...](https://books.google.com/books?id=HLFJAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA5-PA20&lpg=RA5-PA20&dq=coal+lump+grams&source=bl&ots=rG5vD0QN6z&sig=mhO2OhL1PhqmIQL8C1RDfj6eOfw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj72_Wu- JPeAhUdHjQIHcqqD7QQ6AEwFXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=coal%20lump%20grams&f=false) )

Annual internet traffic: 122,088,000,000,000 MB in 2008, 1,152,648,000,000,000 MB in 2016

(petabytes per month to megabytes per year: multiply by 1.2 * 10^10)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_traffic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_traffic)

There are 40,000 coal lumps of 25 grams per tonne of coal.

That would put moving-information-across-the-net energy consumption at 3 billion tonnes (3.4 billion short tons) of coal in 2008. That's about 44% of world coal production in 2008.

If it took 1 lump of coal per MB in 2016, that would be about 29 billion tonnes of coal (32 billion short tons), or about 360% of world coal production in 2013 (latest date available).

[https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?product=coal&graph=consum...](https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?product=coal&graph=consumption)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any plans of supporting other systems? Linux perhaps?

<comment><AUTHOR> I plan to release a cross-platform CLI tool first. The core tool already works under *nix. But there's still a good portion of business logic in the app.

The work on a cross-platform GUI is happening too, but it is way slower than I anticipated. It's going to be native or nothing. I don't consider Electron or QT as an option.

<comment><USER13> Electron I understand, but what's wrong with Qt?

<comment><AUTHOR> Qt does not use native widgets only simulates them.

<comment><USER13> I am aware, however you didn't explain what the problem is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the problem is the uncanny valley between native and its imitation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For me, squashing images is most useful when creating thumbnails. This makes pages load much faster due to the smaller file size. In this sense, optimage would be more useful if it could also intelligently crop the image down to a square.

</comment><comment><USER15> Could you do this as an Adobe (Photoshop) add-on? Wouldn't that be a bigger market?

<comment><USER16> Photoshop is used less and less by designers, with tools like Sketch and Figma taking over. Also, usually the developers would prefer to handle compression.

<comment><USER17> I'd be delighted if designers gave me compressed assets.

<comment><USER15> I agree. Unless the asset compression is actually part of the application then this does not belong on the devs' plate. There are plenty of other things to focus on.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Consuming Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://riskfirst.org/2019/05/14/Hacker-News <comment><USER2> I think aggregators like SkimFeed miss an important point, often made on HN: for a lot of people, including me, a lot of the value of HN is in the comments. In fact, going to the extreme, some posts have little learnable content other than TIL. First example that comes to mind is a post I recently upvoted: Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19946989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19946989)) which had a small number of information-rich comments. Or there are pots where the content is obvious from the title, where I go directly to comments to see people's assessment, e.g. Federated Learning ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19944510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19944510)). On average I would say value of comments to post is 80 to 20 percent for me.

So, rather than tools for submission-based skimming/alerts, I'd like to see advanced tools based on comments: Some ideas:

* Number of comments divided by submission points is a rough measure of contentious topics in the HN community, esp. if this is > 1\. Recent example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19970544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19970544). Sort front page by this score. Another obvious measure would be the number of grayed out and flagged comments.

* Identify comments leading to discussions and highlight them. Since comment scores are hidden this has to be done trough analysis of replies (maybe keywords "good reply" or number of replies).

* Identify comments that are informational, simple measure would be to count the number of links; harder to do would be to analyze the "factfullness".

Just some random thoughts.

P.S. I offer myself as a cautionary example of getting too much into HN: This is the first site I skim on my phone when I get up (to get awake, you know) and I easily spend more than an hour every day (who am I kidding, more like two hours). _This is idiotic!_ Don't let your idea debt ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11027684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11027684)) accumulate.

<comment><USER3> Sometimes I do not even read the article at all. Either I read a few comments, and if it seems interesting I go to read the article. And sometime I just read all the comments without even putting an eye on the article. So yes, I strongly agree. HN value is in the comments.

PS: I just notice I did it again here... replying to a comment without having seen the article. I know in general it is better to have read the article before commenting, for sure for top levels comments at least, but in this case my answer is independent of the original content.

<comment><USER4> Sometimes I don't read the article because I have to take the time to ublock my filters (wsj for instance, nature or medium identity redirects, etc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another website is hckrnews.com, which is an aggregate of all HN posts by time. It's really useful if you want to capture all items, as it has a feature that shows you where left off

<comment><USER6> I browse HN via RSS aggregator; so I catch all the articles, the thing is designed for keeping track of what you've read, integrates with daily reading flow along with all the other RSS feeds. Bonus points, my RSS aggregator of choice has a nice mobile reading experience too so my browsing experience tracks seamlessly across my various platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _We like to think about filter bubbles with respect to political divisions > on Facebook. Users are relentlessly profiled and marketed-against there. > However, they are a natural consequence of the HN algorithm too._

No way, there's just one ranking algorithm for everyone.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm starting to find the "new" page more relevant to me than the front page...

<comment><USER8> If you have the time, a _lot_ of good stuff flies through without getting upvoted (enough). But this is great for me as my job is to curate such stuff for elsewhere ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like Hacker News Daily, created by @cperciva:

[http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/](http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/)

It lists the 10 highest-rated stories each day. I added the RSS feed to my news reader so I can see the biggest items even if I don't happen to read HN that day.

<comment><USER10> I perfer the 'unlinkable' digest myself.

Most know what I mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm confused about the mention of filter bubbles in this context. Generally, they're only bad when they're highly customized to what the individual user wants to see (because it will heavily bias toward their current beliefs).

Maybe it's the negative connotation I have to them due to Facebook so I'm wondering why this is mentioned here. I would expect the "proper" use of a filter bubble to be the application mentioned: not tailored to each individual user but rather highlighting what the entire community will find relevant, in this case based presumable on votes (though we wouldn't know if clicks are also a factor given the proprietary algorithm).

Of course, I suppose an entire community like HN could develop a macro bubble but one might presume an entire community should already have diverse perspectives which could keep it more balanced.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am on HN mainly for the comments.

The way I usually learn about interesting threads (which I mostly like to read after a while so they have enough comments) is the HackerNewsletter[0].

Also (shameless plug), I built AskHN Digest[1], a weekly recap of the top threads of AskHN with their top comments, to make sure I don't miss any good content from the section. Many times the comments there have been insightful and made it worth visiting the thread after a while, when most people had the chance to comment on it.

[0] [https://hackernewsletter.com](https://hackernewsletter.com)

[1] [https://askhndigest.com](https://askhndigest.com)

Edit: formatting

</comment><comment><USER13> The RSS feed ([https://news.ycombinator.com/rss](https://news.ycombinator.com/rss)) comes into FreshRSS ([https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS](https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS))

Usually just skim the comments to gather insight as quickly as possible, if there seems to be a strong signal with depth, I'll add the HN page to Pocket ([https://getpocket.com](https://getpocket.com)) and check back later when I clear through all the backlog of interesting things

HN has replaced Reddit for me. I'm still reading Slashdot, two decades later, it usually just dupes HN.

Also Lobsters ([https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs)) has some decent content, similar position in that it often dupes HN, but interesting regardless

</comment><comment><USER14> _Recently, I've been hearing about Skimfeed, which aggregates 12-or-so articles from a bunch of news sources including HN._

The top link in Skimfeed's HN section is that post itself!

</comment><comment><USER15> I use an old FF version running greasemonkey just to browse HN. My GM script concats two pages of posts, filters out any posts that have less votes than x/hr since being posted, and highlights ones that have a list of keywords I'm interested in.

I love FF, but it's a constantly shifting target esp wrt greasemonkey! I gave up trying to convert my old scripts.

<comment><USER16> Sounds like a lot of work. There's a Telegram channel that posts all links when they hit a score of 50, so you don't need to filter and you know what you've read and what you haven't (@news_ycombinator on Telegram).

It's basically the same idea as the good old Google Reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did not know about AlerHN but signed up and added some search terms relevant to my main personal work project.

</comment><comment><USER18> I use RSS to see the latest news stories. No need for any other third party webpage, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER19> there was a ML experiment back in 2015 to categorize the posts: [https://monkeylearn.com/blog/hacker-news-categorizer-with- ma...](https://monkeylearn.com/blog/hacker-news-categorizer-with-machine- learning/)

sadly it is no longer live. Could be a great side-project!

</comment><comment><USER20> No mentions of n-gate?

<comment><AUTHOR> What do I need to google to understand this reference?

<comment><USER21> "n-gate", which should lead you to [http://n-gate.com/hackernews/](http://n-gate.com/hackernews/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wrote a script which opens a bunch of random HN links in new tabs. In firefox you have to over-ride the default amount of tabs you can open and change it to something like 9999. I once shared the script on HN under a different account, and it got no interest at all. The idea behind the script is that it presents random articles, so there is no bias behind the webpage you are reading. I use the script all the time and it's great to be presented with articles you otherwise would not have clicked. It's not hard to write such a script, but it gets trickier when you start to add filters to it. So for example, you may want to omit opening links with 'Soylent', 'Drone' or 'Trump' in the title.</comment>


Python and Machine Learning in Astronomy [audio] - <AUTHOR> https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/81/python-and-machine-learning-in-astronomy <comment><USER2> I've just discovered this podcast thanks to HN. Thanks @privong

</comment><comment><USER3> Great episode, there are also great mobile apps out there for viewing the Sky through your phone if you never could afford that telescope and had no idea what each star you're looking at is, using GPS for locating you, and revealing even the stars you can't see (pointing downwards would reveal stars on the other side). I would name some, but there are too many and I haven't settled one any yet.

<comment><USER4> I like most the Stellarium app. It's cheap (free for desktop) and works great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a pretty stellar podcast about python in general and all the episodes have transcripts.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your best side project / passive income in 2015? - <AUTHOR> Hope it's not too early.<p>What are you most successful side-projects / passive income sources in 2015. <comment><USER2> Improvely ([https://www.improvely.com](https://www.improvely.com)) and W3Counter ([https://www.w3counter.com](https://www.w3counter.com)) both started as tools for my own use, and are now the passive income I live on. They're both analytics tools -- one's geared towards professionals, and the other to hobbyists. Improvely is purely paid subscriptions, while W3Counter is freemium with some ad revenue.

In the 2012 thread, I had just launched Improvely.

In the 2013 thread, I had hit $10K/month in recurring revenue.

In the 2014 thread, revenue had doubled to around $20K/mo.

Since then, revenue has doubled again, to around $40K/mo.

I still work alone. I took all of August off to visit my girlfriend's extended family in another state and then a beach vacation when we got back. Other than keeping my Surface tablet in my cabin/room in case something were to break that health checks and autoscaling can't fix, and answering a couple customer e-mails before bed each night, everything ran itself just fine.

Another side project that's weirdly taken off is "Improved Contact Form". It's a little one-click-install app for Shopify stores that I threw together for a relative. It adds one of those floating "Contact Us" buttons to each page, that pops up a contact form, along with a dedicated contact page. When someone submits either form, the store owner gets the mail along with a list of all the pages the customer viewed before contacting them and the customer's location (geoip lookup).

I threw it up on their app directory for free, and a year later, I host the contact forms on 10% of their stores, which is ~17K companies or so. I'm going to need to leverage that into something eventually. Maybe a whole suite of one-click-install widgets for shops, like a SumoMe for ecommerce.

<comment><USER3> You are a BEAST. Always inspiring to see your progress here.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What are you most successful side-projects / passive income sources in 2015.

Previous incarnations:

2014 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588)

2014 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402)

2013 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6661536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6661536)

2012 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271)

EDIT: added whitespace for para.

</comment><comment><USER4> I released a book teaching beginner Django web app development: [http://hellowebapp.com](http://hellowebapp.com)

Sure, it was quite a bit of work beforehand, but I've made around $25,000 from it so far, around $13,000 if you don't count the Kickstarter campaign.

The first book working so well is one of the reasons why I'm writing a followup book (which is fundraising on Kickstarter now: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1868398473/hello-web- ap...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1868398473/hello-web-app- intermediate-concepts))

FYI: The best thing I did when releasing a book was to a have a super-tier with screencasts and videos. That one tier provides ~60% of the revenue from the sales of the book.

<comment><USER5> Looks cool. If I back the Kickstarter on the "both books" tier, when do I get the first book?

<comment><USER4> Immediately after the Kickstarter ends, so early October. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wrote and published a novel about a game played in virtual reality in the year 2020 ([http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZFF6NVK](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZFF6NVK)). It came out three weeks ago and has been providing "holiday money" rather than just "beer money" so far.

My grand vision is to create the game in the book for real, to launch in 2020, just like in the book (more info here: solarversia.com/about/). It's had a great reception so far (I've targeted Ready Player One fans) and I'm in the process of bringing on non-execs to Spiralwerks, the company behind the game (which features heavily in the book), and also talking to agents who might want to represent me for a traditional publishing deal. Meeting my first VC next week.

If it wasn't obvious, I'm hoping for a big wave of publicity when Oculus / Morpheus / HTC Vive et al launch next year.

Oh yeah, my London Live interview where I discuss the big vision: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bo0u3C5D-Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bo0u3C5D-Y)

If you know anyone in VR / publishing, I'd love an intro.... :-)

<comment><USER7> That's a really interesting concept! I'm going to pick up a copy of your book, good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I self-published a guide that helps junior developers dramatically improve their chances of getting hired at startups: [https://kokev.in/hired- fast](https://kokev.in/hired-fast)

I'm glad I didn't do it solely for the money, because I think revenues so far works out to something around minimum wage. However, it was a pretty satisfying challenge and I enjoyed every minute of it. I've gotten some great feedback from people who have landed some great jobs, so it provides a sense of fulfillment.

Like many others, I relied a lot on Nathan Barry's Authority ([http://nathanbarry.com/authority](http://nathanbarry.com/authority)) to write this ebook, which I'd recommend if you're looking to do the same.

</comment><comment><USER9> I started PeerCube [https://www.peercube.com](https://www.peercube.com), an online crowd-lending analytics and automation service, in 2012 as a side project. In 2015, the service is managing more than $50 millions in retail lender portfolios. We also do custom analysis for institutional lenders who are managing over $500 million in crowd-lending investments. It is now full- time work for my wife and I.

Most interesting aspect is that I have no professional background in finance other than managing personal investment portfolio and a few finance courses during MBA. Now I am working with hedge fund managers and financial institutions on risk assessment and management, securitization, and valuations that are considered highly technical and domain specific.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was lucky enough to be born with gifts that make me good at writing code. I trade that coding ability for money. I invest that money in the S&P 500 (ticker VOO). I've been doing this a while and have invested about $900,000 to date. The trailing 10 year return is about 8% per year. So let's call it $72,000. $72,000 of passive income.

</comment><comment><USER11> Quotesy ([https://itunes.apple.com/app/id995278698](https://itunes.apple.com/app/id995278698)) brings the most memorable quotes from your favorite movies and TV shows to your mobile device. Discover, revisit or save your favorite quotes.

• Features the best curated collection of memorable, funny, awesome, cute, geeky, philosophical quotes from the best movies and TV shows

• Get bored no more, Quotesy brings amazing new content everyday to kill time and cheer you up!

• Like quotes to build your awesome collection to revisit later or share with your friends

• Share quote images and GIFs with friends or quote the text in your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Email, Pinterest, Instagram and even more.

• Download the pics from Quotesy and share the awesomeness with your friends And much much more…

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://fantasysupercontest.com](https://fantasysupercontest.com)

The Las Vegas SuperContest is a largest NFL picks contest. Last year winner, CH BALLERS, took home $726,000 in prize money and got a record of 76.1% win percentage. (52.5% to break even in sports gambling for the uninitiated.)

The interesting thing about the SuperContest is that very contestants picks are made public every Saturday and my site keep track of their picks and does consensus analysis. This give users 1 days to act on the information.

I just released it 3 weeks ago for the start of this year NFL season. Not really looking to monetize it yet, but traffic is increasing every day.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm earning passive income from a book I wrote on how to set a price for your software... [http://taprun.com/pricing](http://taprun.com/pricing)

</comment><comment><USER14> Just this month I've decided to try and take BugMuncher ([https://www.bugmuncher.com](https://www.bugmuncher.com)) from side project to full time gig. I've given up my freelance work and been putting all my time (and then some) into marketing and development.

I'm probably going to start blog series about the process if people are interested?

</comment><comment><USER15> Had some success with the Music Player for Reddit ([http://reddit.musicplayer.io/](http://reddit.musicplayer.io/)) this year. Received good feedback from Reddit, Product Hunt and The Next Web. I'm not doing this for profit so I only have about three figures in donations coming in which cover the hosting and domain name costs.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm planning on one because I'm currently working on some play around side- projects for learning. Hoping to start one that I hope will earn me some money soon, and I plan to build a small version of it 24 to 36 hours and show it to my *intended customers, and also looking to start off another one before the year ends.</comment>


Node.js MVC Framework,Use the Full ES6/7 Features to Develop Node.js App - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/75team/thinkjs <comment><USER2> Very interesting... on the project website, the example is a login form, I would suggest _NOT_ using md5, pbkdf2 is baked in as are stronger HMAC hashing options.

The style reminds me of ASP.Net MVC for some reason, a bit different than other MVC in node frameworks I've seen. That said, I'm not sure I really like the abstraction after working with other node tooling. I'm working on a project now that has structured boilerplate over express that's structured similarly, and it's kind of awkward to deal with after a while. ES6+ by default is kind of nice though.

I'm also curious how errors for json requests are handled... imho this should be one of the first things demonstrated in the structure of a web application.</comment>


Vitamin D found to influence 200 genes, interacts with DNA (Oxford) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100823172327.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> A few highlights:

 _researchers at the University of Oxford have shown the extent to which vitamin D interacts with our DNA. They used new DNA sequencing technology to create a map of vitamin D receptor binding across the genome. The vitamin D receptor is a protein activated by vitamin D, which attaches itself to DNA and thus influences what proteins are made from our genetic code.

The researchers found 2,776 binding sites for the vitamin D receptor along the length of the genome. These were unusually concentrated near a number of genes associated with susceptibility to autoimmune conditions such as MS, Crohn's disease, systemic lupus erythematosus (or 'lupus') and rheumatoid arthritis, and to cancers such as chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and colorectal cancer. They also showed that vitamin D had a significant effect on the activity of 229 genes including IRF8, previously associated with MS, and PTPN2, associated with Crohn's disease and type 1 diabetes.

"Our study shows quite dramatically the wide-ranging influence that vitamin D exerts over our health," says Dr Andreas Heger from the MRC Functional Genomics Unit at Oxford, one of the lead authors of the study._</comment>


Highrise is back with Basecamp - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/highrise-is-back-with-basecamp-c55fdcf28d9d <comment><AUTHOR> Related:

[https://medium.com/@natekontny/moving-on-from- highrise-94fb2...](https://medium.com/@natekontny/moving-on-from- highrise-94fb26df67e7)</comment>


Letters: How to Reverse the Rising Suicide Rate - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/opinion/suicide-rate.html <comment><USER2> Suicide and depression are different but related issues. People who are not suffering from clinical depression will also commit suicide when faced with a difficult moment of desperation.

People commit suicide because they've run out of options and they feel like it's the only way out. What is needed is more open places and people to turn to when one is desperate.

A friend you can talk to or groups of people you can be yourself with goes a long way.

Of course, if you have clinical depression or some other psychiatric disorder none of that helps. Mental sickness is horrible. I wonder if in the future people could pay with crypto-currency and get anonymous (legal/vetted) help. I can see that making a difference but I am very skeptical against gimmicks and "one size fits all" solutions.

But hey,at least society accepts this as a problem,this can be a serious taboo in some cultures.</comment>


The iPodTouch Is What The OLPC XO Should Have Been - <AUTHOR> http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/article/3496/the-ipodtouch-is-what-the-olpc-xo-should-have-been

<comment><USER2> Synopsis: The ipod touch has better software architecture and mass-production has made it cheap ergo it is better than the OLPC.

My conclusion: Apples to oranges. The touch does little to teach you to be computer literate, and the lack of keyboard means learning to type isn't even an option. For the target market in developing nations, the OLPC is still better than an ipod.

<comment><USER3> Let me preface by saying I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate the XO-1. In my year and a half or so of blogging it's probably the only blog topic that managed to enrage me ([http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/Rarely-Am-I-Actually- Angere...](http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/Rarely-Am-I-Actually-Angered-by- Something-I-Read-But-This-Piece-of-Drek-Managed-To-Do-It.aspx))

So I'm biased.

That said I'd argue the OLPC doesn't do much to teach kids how to be computer literate either. Look at the screen shots and you'll see the thing has more in common with a $99 calculator than it does with a PC of any kind. It's design centers around a few specialized apps and the Internet which are both things the iPod touch does better.

So while I don't 100% agree with the author (a keyboard would be nice) his point is a good one. The OLPC is a lousy product that only gets by because it's aimed at people who supposedly have no other choice. But the iPod touch being at the price point it is means there ARE other choices which in turn makes the OLPC just a crappy project.

Poor people deserve great computing experiences too!

<comment><USER2> Valid points.

I wish that simply making slightly outdated equipment easily available to anyone who wants it, but doesn't have the economic means would gain more traction.

Even if the hardware/software is outdated moving from windows 95 to windows Vista is less of a cognitive leap than going from Sugar to Windows or Linux or something.

I think we sell kids short in terms of how much they can catch onto by playing around. I don't see the point in giving them a dumbed-down OS instead of a 'real' one.

<comment><USER3> Netbooks are getting to that point. They're both in the pircerannge of the OLPC (with a hefty discount for Governments buying in the 100,000 range) and they have mass market appeal behind them which should hopefully push software.

Honestly, I'm surprised the market for netbook specific children's games isn't larger

<comment><USER2> What would you consider 'netbook specific'? I've been able to run several mainstream games on my netbook pretty decently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My opinion: kids don't need laptops to learn. Old school concept/understanding based learning works fine! I even think having a laptop then can be a distraction or a hindrance to actual learning.

By the time they are in 8th or 9th grade, they can use normal computers. No toy devices required.

<comment> bjelkeman-again "Don't need", true. But can potentially really benefit from. Sugata Mitra had a cracking presentation at Activate09 in London the other week, where he showed how dropping computers in front of (illiterate) children could really make them go and investigate and learn. The trick (he said) was not to give one computer per child, but to have them work in groups.

The Guardian (event organiser) said that the videos of all speakers would be up within a month, so maybe you can see this very inspiring presentation as well.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugata_Mitra>

<comment><USER5> Here is is presenting on the same subject in 2007: [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_ki...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The two projects have had very different aims and constraints. The iPod definitely would not have satisfied many of the aims of OLPC. Whether those aims were sensible or realistic or competently executed is an exercise for the reader.

</comment><comment><USER6> hindsight is 20/20

</comment><comment><USER7> Good luck teaching children how to use objc.

Seriously, python is way better than objc from an elegance perspective. You don't need a crazy bloated cocoa API built on top with python either.

A book came out about pygame co-authored by someone in primary school. Not only are kids able to use python, but some also know it well enough to write books on the subject.

The ipod touch is subsidised by itunes/appstore/phone company. It's a console. It's closed.

ipod doesn't do collaboration well. Apple bans developers from talking bad about it - or tries to. It also doesn't have social learning features designed into the apps, or the OS.

ipod touch has a much smaller screen, which is poor for reading and viewing videos.

ipod touch can't be powered easily by a car battery.

You can't place the ipod touch on a desk, sit in your chair and play with it - with other children sitting next to you. Imagine laying the ipod on the desk... it would lie there flat. Fail.

The ipod touch is designed for a very different audience, and for different goals. To expect it is as good for teaching, and learning as an OLPC is silly.

Has the author even seen an ipod touch in a learning environment? Has the author even seen an OLPC at all?

I call uninformed ignoramus on the article - and fart in that general direction.</comment>


"Design Patterns" Aren't - <AUTHOR> http://perl.plover.com/yak/design/ <comment><USER2> I sympathize with the critique of GoF design patterns, but the author is seriously distorting Alexander in his eagerness to dissociate him from them. "How can you distribute responsibility for design through all levels of a large hierarchy" is not the theme of A Pattern Language, which is easy to see when you consider that the book is largely about dwellings (which don't involve any large hierarchies).

I agree, though, that the most interesting aspects of Alexander never made it into GoF. His key insight is that buildings should be designed around what makes humans feel more alive in them. Applying that to software, you'd end up thinking more about projects and teams than about iterators or singletons.

Another aspect of Alexander that's relevant to programming is his exploratory approach to making buildings. As I understand it, he never designs anything up front. Rather, he studies the site, talks to the people, and builds a little at a time, allowing the thing to emerge in a way that is appropriate.

<comment><USER3> >His key insight is that buildings should be designed around what makes humans feel more alive in them. Applying that to software, you'd end up thinking more about projects and teams than about iterators or singletons.

No - I think you would end up thinking more about the end users of your applications.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, good point - that's a much better way to draw the analogy. (For some reason I missed this comment when the thread was current.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An interesting part is the addendum in the postscript, where he wonders why "almost everyone who has read this has completely missed the point".

Of course he blames the misunderstanding on the readers (who else?), but it interesting example for anyone concerned with presentations or communication in general to ponder why this happens in this specific presentation.

<comment><USER5> He states the answer(but still doesn't see it) in the post post script - "Why do people focus on pages 4, 5, and 6 of a 13-page talk, and forget all about slides 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13, where I make the real point?"

Um, because in 2002 your presenter skills sucked and you included pages 4, 5, 6 which weren't supportive of your real point.

Also, because of the nice goat picture the one thing everyone will remember is page 6 and that "the C++ macro system blows goat dick".

Making your most memorable point be one that isn't what you're trying to convey is fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lots of good reading on plover.com. Back in my Perl days he was one of my favorite writers. He's also the only person who does a clear job of explaining how regular expressions work.

<comment><USER7> Higher Order Perl is a must read for anyone working in any mainstream dynamic language (Python, Ruby, JavaScript, etc.). There are efforts afoot to port the examples to various other languages, much the way The Little Schemer has been ported and mangled in various ways. It's just a really enlightening book for anyone without a strong functional programming background (and probably even those with a lot of functional programming experience, as it happily bounces back and forth between functional idioms and Perl idioms to produce really interesting code).

It's one of a few books that I've checked out of the library a couple of times, only to end up buying it. (Last time I moved, I had something like 30 boxes of books...I sold more than half of them to Half Price Books, and promised myself that I do not buy books anymore. But some books are just mandatory.)

<comment><USER8> Talk about porting: The Little Schemer was The Little Lisper when I was in school.

<comment><USER9> Well, scheme is a lisp so in a sense "The Little Schemer" is still "The Little Lisper".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What the author says happened to the words "Design Patterns" happened to the words "Object Oriented" in the late 90's. Words were appropriated to mean something other than the original intention. Alan Kay has explicitly stated that by "Object Oriented" he didn't mean something like Java. (Alan Kay once stood up in front of Smalltalk Solutions conference as keynote speaker and castigated the whole Smalltalk community saying: "I didn't mean Smalltalk to be a _Programming Language_!" * )

What the author's saying: Alexander did not mean something like the GoF Design Patterns, so maybe we should look at Alexander's book again?

( * - He originally meant it to be something like the OLPC operating system.)

</comment><comment><USER11> _Object Oriented Software Design_ and _Architecture and Planning_ are two very different activities.

It's no wonder that Patterns in each discipline should vary so widely.

As different from each other as they are from 1920s _Stitching_ Patterns sold in catalogs with bulk cloth.

</comment><comment><USER12> In a nutshell, FTA:

* _People are using 1970s-era languages_

* _The "Design Patterns" solution is to turn the programmer into a fancy macro processor_

<comment><USER4> But the point he actually wanted to convey was:

* Christopher Alexanders design patterns are a valuable concept which might benefit computer programming.

* But GoF patterns sucks and has nothing to do with Alexanders patterns

Too bad he doesn't provide any kind of example of how Alexander-type patterns could be applied to programming. Otherwise it might have been a quite interesting presentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dude -- this is awful. And I don't like design patterns.

If you're going to trash something, at least know enough about it to be able to describe what you're trashing.

I agree with the author that thinking about design is where we all want to go. Re-usable bits of pre-digested thinking is crap. But with generics you can do container-iterator stuff pretty easily in most modern languages. His examples and his understanding of where languages were is sub-standard, even for 2002. ("when we're talking patterns everyone knows we mean C++" -- WTF?)

<comment><USER14> I agree. His understanding of how you might apply these patterns in C++ seems substandard, at best. Doesn't he know about std::<container_type>::iterator? He didn't even seem to know about templates at all.

But that's just the technical stuff that he rapidly dismissed in his update/addendum. Fine. I still think he doesn't get it. I think he's right that patterns are largely about vocabulary, but he's wrong to say that the GoF book (or patterns in general) turn people into macro processor systems. I have yet to read the GoF book, but my basic understanding of patterns is that it indeed creates vocabulary - which gives you abstractions with which to glue your thoughts together so you can have new thoughts. That's what vocabulary does. That's exactly how I think of design patterns in software.

<comment><USER7> _I have yet to read the GoF book_

You're doing it wrong. You criticize a criticism _after_ you've read the topic of the criticism, not before. Subtle difference, I know, but worth keeping in mind.

<comment><USER14> Doesn't mean I haven't read about patterns, or pieces of the GoF book (which I have; and I'm reading the book itself right now). That would be like saying you can't credibly talk about graphics unless you've read the white book: it simply isn't so.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Linked in Worth It? - <AUTHOR> Whenever i hit Linked in, i get this long list of different people spamming certificates of courses they just completed, some machine learning project to detect masked and unmasked face or even machine playing dino on chrome, it really irritates me, is it really that important to advertise your project on Linked in which is not even open source, or advertise how with extreme difficulties you just completed a course, contents of which you are gonna forget next summer? How much this advertising-yourself thing works? Secondly, is it really that important to do fancy projects? What if am interested in less fancy stuff, say cli tool development or compiler development, will the society accept me?<p>P.S.:Asked by a Junior year college student. <comment><USER2> For what purpose? If you use it to help with connecting to people and staying in touch, yes. It doesn't replace the main ways you connect though: conferences and other meetings where you connect face to face, and connecting through shared efforts on Open Source projects, standards, etc.

Yes, there are recruiter spammers. Ignore them, or better yet fire off a polite "Not interested right now, but who knows down the line." type of email. It never hurts to keep doors open.

For advertising your project on LinkedIn, no..that's not where I see value in LinkedIn for most people.

Advertise your project instead in the relevant forums for your language, toolkit, interest. For example, make something that developers or startups might find interesting? Post it on HN with a Show HN. Make some new Rust crate? Post it on /r/rust, or Rust Weekly. Launch a new MVP site? Post it on Techcrunch and HN.

Individual communities such as telecom, ICS, geospatial, defense, etc. have their own forums to post on.

The more utility what you create has for others, and the more freedom you give others to leverage that utility, the more your project will get your name out there.

Another way of thinking about it: don't worry about optimizing your brand right now, create useful interesting things, let the people who share your interest in those types of things know about them, and incorporate any feedback you receive into new things. Also, make yourself available to help people learning the things you've already learned.

</comment><comment><USER3> Linkedin can be used in many ways. Some bottomfeeders even use it as a dating service.

This is how I see it: It's a place to connect to a professional network of people you know or have worked with. When you are looking for a job, the recruiter and interviewer WILL look you up on Linkedin.

After that they'll see if there are any shared 1st level connections and reach out to them for comments about you.</comment>


Keeping Your Laptop Plugged in All the Time Will Kill Its Battery Faster - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/09/laptop-battery/

<comment><USER2> Unless you own a Lenovo which has power management functions that avoid that problem.</comment>


Everything I Know About Tennis I Learned from Cow Paths - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/07/everything_i_kn_4.html

<comment><USER2> Not sure about the patterns being deader now than in the 80's, the ball-boy's' patches appear as dead as the baseline so either it's the courts (or number of games per court) that have changed, or his hypothesis needs to explain that as well.

<comment><USER3> If you look in the center of the court you will notice the wear patterns. He explains that in the 80's there were more players rushing the net and relying on agility vs. raw power from the baseline.

<comment><USER4> The grass patterns say technology is changing the game. Same with Golf (distance) and Basketball (height). Haven't seen it in football or baseball though.

<comment><USER5> Technology is making people taller?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> matthew-wegner I guess the interesting question is: How are the Cow Paths on your website/product/technology/industry/etc changing? And why?</comment>


Ask HN: Excluding WordPress, what is your favorite for blogs or small stores? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER3> Jekyll or Hugo, hosted for free on Netlify and using Forestry.io or Cloudcannon as the CMS.

Jekyll is great for blogs and simple brochure sites, go Hugo (heh) if you need something more complex. Hugo is much faster than Jekyll when running builds on larger sites.

I'd recommend Snipcart for e-commerce. Recently built a shop with it, using Jekyll as the framework. I've made a number of online stores with a variety of platforms and this was the easiest - took about 15 mins. Cheaper than Shopify too.

Edit: Here's a guide from Snipcart on how to do it - [https://snipcart.com/blog/static-site-e-commerce- part-2-inte...](https://snipcart.com/blog/static-site-e-commerce- part-2-integrating-snipcart-with-jekyll)

(I have nothing to do with Snipcart, just like the service)

<comment><USER4> I looked into snipcart however the admin was slow, and the pricing was much more expensive then Shopify when at scale (revenues in the millions).

Over the holidays I spent the time to write a Sinatra based replacement for the Shopify Checkout. There is a big opportunity for someone to do with ecommerce what Discorse did for forum software.

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't revenues in the millions justify in not having Shopify but some custom integration with whatever payment processor you are using?

<comment><USER4> Yup, it's absolutely getting to that point, but not for $$$ reasons. Shopify Plus, their enterprise plan is fixed price. This is why I spent much of the holidays writing our own custom cart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A number of our portfolio sites (including [http://piaustralia.com.au](http://piaustralia.com.au) ) are static html hosted on AWS S3 + Cloudfront.

The sites are created using Middleman[1], a ruby static site generator which I've found to be a little bit more flexible than Jekyll.

On our static sites, we grab inventory information as JSONP from a small Sinatra based service on Elastic Beanstalk with read only access to the DB. Other than this and the checkout (we'll get to that in a bit), everything is client side Javascript utilising local storage for the cart state.

We do not host our own checkout. Instead we use Shopify's ancient and way under-publicised "Cart Links"[2] feature. Cart Links let you pre-populate a cart and send the user to the checkout if you so wish.

To upload the static files to S3 we use an awesome program called S3_website which knows how to look for the rendered html from a number of static site generators, and sync it to S3. It's also smart enough to setup redirects, invalidate CDN caches and even gzipping content. It's freaking amazing[3].

[1] Middleman - [https://middlemanapp.com](https://middlemanapp.com)

[2] Shopify Cart Links - [https://help.shopify.com/themes/customization/cart/use- perma...](https://help.shopify.com/themes/customization/cart/use-permalinks- to-preload-cart)

[3] S3_website - [https://github.com/laurilehmijoki/s3_website](https://github.com/laurilehmijoki/s3_website)

<comment><USER6> Any good recommendations on setting S3 links for public access? (permissions wise)

<comment><USER7> I'd just use Netlify. Ever since they've changed their pricing to have basic static sites for free, I'm sold on them and like them a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Had a conversation with a potential client about this the other day:

For a small store I wouldn't recommend anything other than Shopify or Squarespace as they're cheap, nicely designed [0], secure enough and will meet 90% of anyone's needs out of the box.

Once the client is up and running and have figured things out a bit, something more custom may be appropriate - perhaps a static site with an e-commerce provider such as Snipcart or Gumroad (as I've mentioned in another comment).

Only when a client has serious cash to spend and serious requirements, such as integrating with CRMs and fulfilment systems or complex user roles and permissions should they even begin to consider something like Wordpress or Drupal - or even Magento (shudder).

[0] My main gripe with Squarespace is that their templates are optimised for looking fantastic in demos over being usable for more mundane content. Very few clients are able to produce the quality of photography demanded by the designs.

<comment><USER8> Good comment. Whole heartedly agree. Our job is to give them what they need, not what we think is cool. I hate it when developers over-engineer their client's needs. It becomes a costly maintenance nightmare down the road for everyone.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. I see it a lot, especially in charities and non-profits, and it makes me angry.

They're sold on platforms which are too complex and expensive, just because they don't know (or are not informed) how much things should cost or what the alternatives are.

Like you say, it's our job to provide what people need, and trustworthy relationships over short-term gain are always more valuable in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Things I hear CMS developers talking about: Constantly applying security updates. The lack of maintenance on their favourite plugins. Which caching plugins works the best. How important a CDN is. The need for security plugins, which themselves are often exploited. The HN/Reddit hug of death. Whether a host has suitable versions of PHP. "Webscale" being ten users a minute.

I don't get it. I've been using a static site built in Jekyll, which just works(tm). I recently rebuilt my blog with AMP compliance, and it still looks the way I want it to.

If you're not Ruby person, there's Hugo as a Go alternative. For blogs, we really should be seeing the end of maintenance, vulnerabilities, and static pages are cheaper to host.

Edit: of course, I answered the blog question, but not the ecommerce one.

<comment><USER10> I understand most people's enthusiasm with static site generators. But either they are only building sites for themselves or their clients are very different than mines. How do your clients edit the site? How do they do simple things like cropping images for example? And what about forms, newsletter subscribe forms or contact forms? Do you use a third party service for everything? I can't see how that is simpler or more reliable.

<comment><USER11> The omnipresent pitfall of engineers: Assuming that all end users share your knowledge and skills.

<comment><USER9> I look at it the other way around.

The assumption that Wordpress means a client can edit their own site has been very wrong, for many users. Unless the site is built in Microsoft Word (and I've seen that done..) they are going to be using a professional for edits, and hence I refer back to static builders.

<comment><USER12> That's why we are developing Strattic, which is a static publishing sites for the popular CMSs like WordPress. This way end-users who aren't techy can continue to manage their sites in our secure staging area, and the site is then published live as static. Our company site is running on our platform - the origin site is WordPress: [https://strattic.com](https://strattic.com). I'd love to hear feedback, and we're also looking for beta testers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use [https://getgrav.org/](https://getgrav.org/) and this is why:

\- No DB. Use a flat file layout similar to Jekyll or static site generators.

\- Offers dynamic features like redirecting and custom routing when you need it. This isn't possible with a pure static site generator.

\- Decent optional panel to write, edit and manage almost all aspects of your site.

\- Quite fast once you set it up with good caching.

<comment><USER14> I first thought cool. On second look I see it is based on PHP. I'm sure newest PHP is really fast and advanced but I don't want to invest any of my time on that language (just my personal opinion). Update: OK, it also runs on nginx. Made a wrong claim it does not run on it. Sorry.

<comment><USER15> Well that shouldn't be true. Firstly there is no good reason why any PHP framework would ever require a specific web server, so the claim seems dubious. A little reading in their installation guide confirms Grav should work with any web server: [https://learn.getgrav.org/basics/installation](https://learn.getgrav.org/basics/installation)

<comment><USER14> Yes, you are right! Corrected it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I made an over-engineered, intricate snowflake for it, for fun: [https://github.com/wincent/masochist](https://github.com/wincent/masochist)

Markdown content stored in Git, custom indexes in Redis/memcached, data fetched via GraphQL, rendered with React, published with`git push`.

Not at all the right tool for the job, but I had a lot of fun building it.

<comment><USER17> Maybe over-engineered, but I really like the result in both the codebase and UI. I'm just curious about your terminology--how do you distinguish what is a 'snippet', 'wiki', or 'blog' post?

<comment><USER16> Wiki for "reference" material, blog for mostly "long form" writing, and snippets as a random grab bag of unorganized content (analagous to gists).

<comment><USER17> Cool, this is exactly the idea I was starting to build from scratch with almost the same stack. I might substitute "Library" where you use the term "Wiki". I think wiki is supposed to mean collaborative editing, but I will be the only one posting/editing (initially at least).

Do you have a mechanism for controlling publish state (like draft, published, archive)?

Other than honoring the CC license you have for that project, are there any other concerns you have about using it as a boilerplate? This project will be focused on sustainable food systems just fyi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I generate static webpages from markdown in a < 100 lines bash script. It's just a for loop using sed, pygments and markdown, hosted on github.

It has a local webserver, spell check, optional image compression, and minimal dependencies.

I don't get the need of Jekyll or Hugo. They're bloated and it's a pain to customize so called "themes". I'm OK with 'boring' HTML and CSS.

<comment><USER19> It's great you built your own tool and workflow that suits you, but there's no need to declare things 'bloated', just because they include things _you_ don't want to use. That's your opinion. Its defaults suit me pretty well, and it's really well documented.

<comment><USER18> Bad wording on my side, sorry. My grief is mostly against some prominent themes that weight 5 MB a page, and feature jQuery to animate the menu.

<comment><USER19> Cool, I hear you but Jekyll actually comes with a very minimal theme (when you 'jekyll new my-site'). Heavy 3rd party themes aren't really the fault of Jekyll.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ghost + Gumroad (selling products) would be a decent alternative.

Other options are to go with static site generators like Middleman or Hugo for your blog and setting up a shop on Shopify or Sellfy.

As a side note, I have open sourced the code [1] for my shop/blog that is running at [https://www.authenticpixels.com](https://www.authenticpixels.com). It is written in Elixir/Phoenix.

[1] [https://github.com/authentic-pixels/ex- shop](https://github.com/authentic-pixels/ex-shop)

<comment><USER21> Site runs very fast. Congratulations

<comment><USER20> Thanks!

I have tried to reduce the JS & CSS being used on the page. I've only included the grid and navbar components from Bootstrap's CSS framework and there is pretty minimal JS involved.

I have used Turbolinks to replace the <body> tag on each request via ajax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you already think we're going to say WordPress, what do you want to do that WordPress doesn't do?

I don't like WordPress for eCommerce, but I think it's great for blogs and content sites.

For eCommerce... just too many variables. Who you want to use for fulfillment, what other systems you want to integrate with, if you need a staging instance or customer loyalty software or any of the 50 other things you can integrate.

For content... Ghost is OK. Just... WordPress has thought of everything already. Plugins, solid UX, extra features you didn't know to ask for... it's hard for other platforms to catch up.

<comment><USER23> For me, it is quite a shallow reason. I just don't enjoy developing in PHP.

Wordpress is amazing at what it does, but I always dread having to touch it. There is nothing else that gets close to it (that I have found) in terms of ease of use for the users, which is why I keep having to return to it. I long for the day when someone writes something just as good in Haskell (hey, I can dream..).

<comment><USER22> You code so little with Word Press, there's an extension for like everything you own or do you already. It's more just configuration stuff, right? What are you trying to do with your new site?

<comment><USER23> I like to really understand what is going on under the hood. If I don't quite understand how something works I like to read the source code. Also sometimes a plugin doesn't quite do exactly what I want, or is so large and complex due to trying to cater for everyone that I just feel uneasy about using it and so for simple things I prefer to just write a little code that does exactly what I need and no more.

Plus, I am a coder. And coders code so that's what I do. It's just a psychological thing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Craft CMS. It allows you to define a meta model in a convenient editor, and lets you render out data with a template engine (HTML/JSON/...). The meta- meta-model consists of a few sensible objects, so it's not just UML rendered down. It has fine grained access control, so you can define which user can access what data.

Things like image uploads in the backend (admin) area are solved. E.g you can setup an S3 bucket that is used for your site's dynamic assets.

Security updates are one-click-installs and I'd say there is at least one per week.

There are plenty of plugins available, too.

It's a bit pricey (compared to FOSS) if you use it for clients, but you can develop for free or even host your own website for free with it.

I've used it twice so far, and I enjoyed it very much.

</comment><comment><USER25> [https://ghost.org/](https://ghost.org/) blogs are really awesome. It's Node.js based, simple to install. I don't like static generators, that authoring experience is just not for me.

<comment><USER26> I use Ghost for my site [http://tedium.co](http://tedium.co), and I've been able to do some interesting things with it. I like the flexibility it offers without the cruft of WordPress.

That said, I do sometimes look longingly at static site generators and wonder what's on the other side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I see static site tools are still trending. I've used a variety of static site tools for play but never had a client opt for it. Probably the only static site I'm currently running is for my local Auckland CSS meetup and that's just plain ol' hard coded HTML.

For those clients that require a CMS and not specifically a blog, I use [http://processwire.com](http://processwire.com)

The plugin ecosystem is lacking but I've always been impressed with its performance and intuitive API. I don't currently run e-commerce on it but Gumroad would be my first choice if I had to.

<comment><USER28> I always push Processwire for questions like this. It is very versatile and makes for a capable CMS / blog / whatever.

I'm planning on using processwire to build a webstore with either Foxycart or Snipcart.

Just as a starter I will be moving my personal blog over to it just so I can have one processwire app in production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> After testing some static site generators I've settled with Hugo and never looked back. I like especially the fact that I only have a single static file with no further dependencies. And the speed is fantastic. Hot reloading is very useful.

</comment><comment><USER30> Prefer my own hacked-together static site generator. First iteration [1] was a mess, next (more-robust cleaner and faster) one is coming along nicely [2] and should replace [1] "any-day-now"..

(nb. If you need Markdown or restructuredText, this isn't for you for the time being, writing a few <p> or <h2> tags and the rare occasional <a> link never much bothered me since ~1998, images/nav have some Haskell-coded "Xtender- renderers" (simplified and no-recompile-needed custom html 'subtemplates' aka 'controls' coming in [2] though), and for more verbose text-content-only tags such `code` or `blockquote` it's easy to set up self-expanding short-tags such as `{X{c:code goes here}}` and `{X{bq:blockquote text here}}` etc.. ;)

[1] [https://github.com/metaleap/HaXtatic/](https://github.com/metaleap/HaXtatic/)

[2] [https://github.com/metaleap/HaXtatic/tree/master/__tmp_nu_](https://github.com/metaleap/HaXtatic/tree/master/__tmp_nu_)

<comment><USER31> If you're able to pull it off (i.e. have the time to iterate until it works) this is probably the best solution for the blogging part. Highest level of flexibility, a lot to learn, not too hard startegic-wise.

<comment><USER30> Heh. I think static-site-gens are the new "PHP/ASP CMS": as in, every small- time coder writes their own from scratch now ;D

v0 "works" already, it's just stupidly inefficient and too messy code to properly refactor (vs rewrite from scratch)..

<comment><USER31> Trust me when I tell you that refactoring is nearly always the better solution. Consider that rewriting from scratch doesn't necessarily yield a better result than what you have already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Squarespace is the clear option. It's even faster to get set up with than WP and in the past 2 years has become a truly viable competitor.

<comment><USER33> I really like Squarespace too, but just be wary if you have a site information architecture that needs to go beyond 1 level of menus. It doesn't handle sub- levels well.

I'd also really appreciate it if they let you save a template page (eg for a landing page) for easy re-use. Re-creating specific landing pages and thank you pages for each campaign we run is a bit of a pain as what I really just want to do is change a few paragraphs of text and update an image or two for these.

<comment><USER34> The lack of multiple levels of menus is something I noticed with Ghost too, when I last played with it.

Also I'm wondering, with Squarespace, it's not clear whether you can install on your own server or not

<comment><USER35> You cannot self host square space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My default choice is XML with XSLT and a simple Makefile to generate the HTML.

<comment><USER14> Haha I like that. But I like also XSLT. Many people think we are strange! :P

<comment><USER36> I think XML, for all the hate it gets, is so much nicer for extensible markup than all the weird template languages people invent daily...

And XSLT/XPath are really nice too. I just need to figure out how to shell out to external programs from libxslt's xsltproc and then I'll be able to do anything I want...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If this is for a client that can't manage a static site themselves, then I would probably look into splitting out the content editing part. For example services like [https://www.datocms.com/](https://www.datocms.com/) let you publish to a separate static site generator.

<comment><USER38> I just discovered Dato when I was looking for a CMS for Middleman and it looks fantastic. Expensive, but it seems to be an excellent choice for client work.

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands All good recommendations here, but I'd add a few more. .

I say take a look at Keystone CMS ([http://keystonejs.com/](http://keystonejs.com/)) - it's a Node based CMS and is really easy to work with and has tons of options to customize as you need it.

My other recommendation would be to use Spike - ([https://www.spike.cf/](https://www.spike.cf/)) (from the same guys who built Roots) along with rooftop CMS ([https://www.rooftopcms.com/](https://www.rooftopcms.com/)) or Contentful CMS ([https://www.contentful.com/](https://www.contentful.com/))

</comment><comment><USER39> Perch is a fantastic solution for both content and commerce sites:

[https://grabaperch.com](https://grabaperch.com)

there's also Flatmarket which I've been meaning to recommend for someone else to try:

[https://christophercliff.com/flatmarket/](https://christophercliff.com/flatmarket/)

[https://github.com/christophercliff/flatmarket](https://github.com/christophercliff/flatmarket)

Most websites I make for people I make with Wordpress or Ghost because the client likes them. My own site is static html — I wrote the current version by hand, but I have since made a rudimentary Perl script to quicken the process.

</comment><comment><USER40> I used to work a lot with Wordpress in the past, but as projects tend to be more and more specific, I found Middleman[1] more flexible and for structured content (eg. directories) or for generating pages automatically, using a YAML structure is very convenient.

For my online shop, I use Shopify[2] as it is a side project and I did not want to spend a lot of time writing / setting it up. Shopify proves very convenient and includes a blog if needed.

[1] Middleman - [https://middlemanapp.com](https://middlemanapp.com)

[2] Shopify - [https://www.shopify.com](https://www.shopify.com)

</comment><comment><USER41> It depends on your skills/needs.

Do you want to customize everything with ease? Do you have someone who can maintain the security of your blog and eventually add new features later? => WordPress on your own hosting

Do you want to use a very classical theme? Do you want a complete service with no skills required and no maintenance? => Wix or WordPress.com

Do you want to customize everything? Do you have someone to maintain the blog on a regular base? => Jekyll on GitHub or on your own hosting

Shall you need to sell things online with the blog, WordPress can be augmented with Shopify, meanwhile Wix has already this feature.

</comment><comment><USER42> Sphinx. Lots of documentation uses it, so it can do most anything, plus if you are familiar with Sphinx, you will be _hopefully_ more likely to write your documentation as well :)

</comment><comment><USER43> Jekyll/Hakyll for blogs. They are both very customizable, you can write Markdown, and since they produce static pages you have one security worry less.

</comment><comment><USER44> I use python based Nikola, a static blog generator. This i s for my personal blog. The killer features for me are using jupyter to write blog posts and custom urls for posts (which seem to be missing from pelican, the only other blog generator to support jupyter). The documentation is good for the usual tasks. In the extremely rare case when the documentation is not sufficient, the code is really easy to understand.

</comment><comment><USER45> As in the previous thread, I'll just cautiously mention OctoberCMS. I don't know if they will do the job, I'm evaluating it for my client projects for project briefs starting with "we'd like a CMS... "

It is just as Open Source. However, it's newer, but has just hit stable recently. A strong plugin system. Purposed built for CMS from the ground up, built on Laravel with all the nice things.

</comment><comment><USER46> I developed a static site generator for e-commerce called Flatmarket: [https://github.com/christophercliff/flatmarket](https://github.com/christophercliff/flatmarket)

It lacks some of the features you'd get with a dedicated backend service but it's truly static and costs about $0.004/transaction on AWS Lambda (not including Stripe's take).

<comment><USER47> I love the artwork for your demo site. Where did you get it?

[https://christophercliff.com/flatmarket/](https://christophercliff.com/flatmarket/)

<comment><USER46> An old stock art CD-ROM by Redouté.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The flat file Kirby CMS is a great option. The starter template has a basic blog implementation, it's easy to start modifying to look like what you want, and it has a basic admin panel for adding new pages/posts that's client friendly, unlike a static site generator. If you're not into making your own theme, there's a site for buying them called getkirby-themes.com which most other flat file CMS options don't have.

It used PHP and can run quite quickly if you setup caching and PHP 7 on your host. Content is generated from txt files that can have any number of fields (titles, subtitles, body, asides, meta info, etc).

As for ecommerce, I use Ecwid. It's a separate login to manage products, but it's also free for 10 or fewer products. After that it's a very reasonable monthly fee.

</comment><comment><USER49> I personally have really enjoyed working with Statamic. It is built on Laravel and super easy to customized.

</comment><comment><USER50> If it's for you, probably hand code. If it's for a client, try [https://pulsecms.com](https://pulsecms.com) It allows you to create static sites with a CMS layer on top that clients can edit easily. Static sites all the way baby!

</comment><comment><USER51> I use Lektor [http://getlektor.com](http://getlektor.com)

</comment><comment><USER52> Webflow + DPD (digital downloads), or Webflow + Shopify (physical goods) If your CMS is not supposed to do anything particularly fancy and if you don't want the annoyance of dealing with techy staff, Webflow is currently the best website builder that I know. It's a visual tool and that saves you lots of time, especially if you are tech savvy. They are just releasing a CMS API that is going to make it even more flexible.

If you are selling real goods, Webflow integrates with Shopify very efficiently. If you are selling digital downloads, I'd consider DPD, which is in many ways better for digital downloads since it was born just for to do that. I am currently using it and I am very satisfied.

</comment><comment><USER53> I really love CityDesk from FogCreek software.

That was the static CMS used my Joel Spolsky.

I downloaded a long time ago, and had to buy it because it worked very well.

Now it is EOLed and I am looking for something similar, but cannot find it. Tried Jeckyl but I am not convinced, although I really love ruby.

<comment><USER54> Yes, even Joel doesn't recommend it anymore... [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/rip- citydesk/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/rip-citydesk/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Have my own blog software, YBlog: [http://blog.fdik.org/yblog2.tar.bz2](http://blog.fdik.org/yblog2.tar.bz2) Probably it's not feasable for most people, because it is heavily relying on YML2 [http://fdik.org/yml](http://fdik.org/yml) and vim [http://vim.org](http://vim.org)

For CMS I really can recommend [http://mezzanine.jupo.org/](http://mezzanine.jupo.org/)

It also includes a Blog, is in Python/Django and is fulfilling all needs from very small to very large sites.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think the comments here shoq that there is a massive opportunity for a Wordpress Killer. Nothing I've seen listed could replace Wordpress for the majority of non technical clients I would hand over a CMS managed site to.

<comment><USER12> We believe the platform we are developing, Strattic, could fill the gaps - <USER2> publishes WordPress (and other platforms) as static sites. That way non- technical clients still get their CMS, and developers get a production static site. Best of both worlds. [https://strattic.com](https://strattic.com)

<comment><USER56> Actually that sounds like something that I could use. How are you going to handle plugins? Or will you not? I suppose you could support plugins that provide content transformations...but not plugins that are more dynamic...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I love Chyrp[1] but have since moved away from PHP and am looking into static solutions like Jekyll, or Ghost[2].

I always make sure to proxy Ghost through a CDN because it lessens the load on my server.

For digital products, I use Sellfy and Selly[#]

[1] [https://github.com/chyrp/chyrp](https://github.com/chyrp/chyrp)

[2] [https://github.com/TryGhost](https://github.com/TryGhost)

[#] [https://sellfy.com/](https://sellfy.com/)

[#] [https://selly.gg/](https://selly.gg/)

</comment><comment><USER58> For my blog, I personally use Flask+Jinja with a custom markdown parsing setup[1]. Sure, it's not the best thing in the world but there's no database and in my experience it works pretty well. I've been meaning to set it up so that things are cached properly, but the machine is beefy enough to handle the current load. And let's be honest, if my blog gets HN'd I'll be too excited to be annoyed by having to switch to a static setup.

[1]: [https://github.com/cyphar/cyphar.com](https://github.com/cyphar/cyphar.com)

</comment><comment><USER59> If you're a fan of React, Gatsby is an excellent project to check out: [https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby](https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby)

</comment><comment><USER60> I have a private blog that I write for my own to better my writing skills.

I use Ulysses (the app) with a custom style (CSS) and extract my posts to an HTML file. I then upload the HTML file and the CSS file, which Ulysses also extracts, to S3, so then I can view it and read it from time to time. I realize this isn't the most elegant solution, but it works for me because I have very specific requirements from a CMS and I haven't been able to find them in any of the CMSes out there. (Most of them don't even have a clue as to what "minimalism" means.)

</comment><comment><USER61> Squarespace can be a good alternative to WordPress. Both have the potential to help you create beautiful and powerful websites. Though WordPress is more flexible & customizable especially with plugins. I've just downloaded a cool WP theme for my website - [https://www.templatemonster.com/wordpress- themes/monstroid2....](https://www.templatemonster.com/wordpress- themes/monstroid2.html) . It's a multipurpose theme that can be used for creating any website you need.

</comment><comment><USER62> Bonsai ([http://tinytree.info/);](http://tinytree.info/\);) because no other static page generator has been so easy yet customizable.

<comment><USER4> What can it do that [https://middlemanapp.com](https://middlemanapp.com) can't?

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> For blogs and personal sites, I'd suggest a static site generator such as ikiwiki (for self-hosting), Branchable (hosted), or Github Pages (hosted, but no SSL support for custom domains).

In addition to SSL support, ikiwiki offers several other useful features for constructing a blog or news site, such as "take all the pages under blog/* and emit a page with the last 10 in reverse order, including an RSS feed".

</comment><comment><USER64> TextPattern was my favourite back when, even if it featured very awkward ideas (all content, styles, maintenance goes through their web interface to database -- good luck with unix tools to compare, diff and patch changes).

These days static content is the only valid answer in my books. I don't want to spend my nights worrying about rotting PHP/Ruby/NodeJS runtimes behind the scenes.

</comment><comment><USER65> Jekyll/Lektor as a static CMS. Deployed to Amazon S3 backed by Cloudfront CDN.

All of this gives me: ease of deploy, AWS's reliable infrastructure, ultra fast website (can easily score 90+ out of 100 on google's pagespeed insights tool), delivered over SSL with a free certificate on my own domain, "infinite" scale, etc.

All of this can literally run on cents of a dollar per month.

</comment><comment><USER66> There is none, that's why everyone it trying but failing to use static page generators, which are nowhere near the WP functionality

</comment><comment><USER67> I use Hugo for static blog generation and GitHub pages for hosting. Works well, and, apart from the domain registration, is free.

</comment><comment><USER68> Harp is pretty good: [https://harpjs.com/](https://harpjs.com/)

If you're already comfortable with the node.js world it's easy to hack it if you want to support something new as well. Out of the box it requires very minimal setup to get things going.

</comment><comment><USER69> I think jekyll is the best thing to blog something. And I recommend to hosting it on github for free.

</comment><comment><USER70> Webhook.org

A great open source CMS based on Firebase that outputs a static site.

Easy to do relationship fields, create JSON templates, customize for clients.

Only issue is developers have stalled out on project dev and basic support. Would love to pay more if someone could fork and take up the charge.

</comment><comment><USER71> We're huge fans of Bolt ([http://bolt.cm](http://bolt.cm)) for small and medium sized websites. Its based on Synfony (PHP) and Twig and allows super easy creation of content types by configuration.

</comment><comment><USER72> For blogs HTML, although I soon wish I used a CMS

For e-commerce, I never want to see Magento again (used at company where I work) and would look squarely at Shopify next time

For both uses any self hosted CMS feels like you spend too much time as admin/configurator

</comment><comment><USER73> I'm a big fan of SiteLeaf - [https://www.siteleaf.com/](https://www.siteleaf.com/)

CMS for static sites (Using Jekyll under the hood)

</comment><comment><USER74> I have grown to love Jade/Pug templates, compiled with npm scripts. You can build your own site generator to convert pug templates with the simple command `pug --watch`.

</comment><comment><USER75> Custom CMS in PHP. That's what I always use for everything.

</comment><comment><USER76> If you just care about hosting code and snippets I'd try GrepPage. It lets you search your stores from the command-line and the web.

(Disclaimer I'm the creator of GrepPage).

</comment><comment><USER77> Part of my Dropbox file tree is synched to a server hosting it with IIS - so I just throw a flat file in my /HTML/ folder and link to it on Gilgamech.com.

<comment><USER78> (It sounds like you have Dropbox installed on the actual server. If that is the case, disregard...)

Dropbox is doing away with allowing you to publicly share docs, so now/soon one can't use Dropbox for hosting static websites anymore.

<comment><USER77> Yeah, that's one of the issues I avoid by directly hosting the files, instead of using them as a web host. I'd use Neocities if I didn't have my own server. (My server is just my old gaming PC, on my home internet.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> I'm on Hugo CMS myself but considered just using medium.com at one point but that won't help you for the e-commerce part.

</comment><comment><USER80> I've really enjoyed OctoberCMS: [http://octobercms.com](http://octobercms.com)

</comment><comment><USER81> I'm looking for a CMS that outputs static generated pages with a progressive web app approach. Any references?

</comment><comment><USER82> Opencart:

The code quality is not good, but it has loots of good functionality and making small modifications is fairly simple.

</comment><comment><USER83> Pimcore.

[https://www.pimcore.org/en](https://www.pimcore.org/en)

</comment><comment><USER84> For a small store that is super easy to setup I would use Weebly. You can also do a blog through it.

</comment><comment><USER85> Is there already a 'Jekyll' on Crystal? Jekyll with hugo speed, that would be awesome!

</comment><comment><USER86> Orchard works quite well after it is setted up properly.

</comment><comment><USER87> HTML and JavaScript and Postgres.

</comment><comment><USER88> For personal use or client proof?

</comment><comment><USER89> Have your tried prestashop?

</comment><comment><USER90> Allthink is pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER91> Blogger :)

</comment><comment><USER92> I've recently been using Hexo for blogs: [https://hexo.io/](https://hexo.io/)

</comment><comment><USER93> Github pages. Free hosting. Just fork a Jekyll template and off you go.

</comment><comment><USER94> I sort of like werc, the framework behind cat-v. I would only imagine it for a personal site/portfolio, however, and not for commercial or business use.

</comment><comment><USER95> I used kirby for a brochureware project and it went really well.</comment>


Design a journey for better product feedback - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/post/design-a-journey-for-better-product-feedbacks-bc64da6852 <comment><AUTHOR> A while ago, a friend show me how to get better product feedback. Now, I'd like to share it

Feel free to share your tips for getting better feedback :)</comment>