
Txt.fyi - mdlincoln
https://txt.fyi/about/
======
lordelph
I like this, but be ready for 'questionable content' like dox and password
lists. Dealing with that crap was why I stopped running pastebin.com :)

~~~
austenallred
Hahaha, I built something just like this site once, just to see what would
happen.

Wouldn't this be fun? No auth, no rules, no permanent database, just plain
text that hangs out for a while (though people could reply to it - ours was
more like a forum). The ones with replies jump to the top, everything else
slowly falls off into the abyss where it can never be found again.

Literally had people posting ASCII-rendered child pornography within 24 hours

~~~
i336_
Apart from the last line, that site design sounds like a lot of fun. I'm
guessing you went "okay this isn't going to work" and killed it - or is it
still quietly buried somewhere?

Also, did you keep the code? Might be a fun startpoint for others to
springboard off of.

~~~
austenallred
> Apart from the last line, that site design sounds like a lot of fun

"Other than that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" :)

Nah the code is gone. Wrote it in <24 hours, and it wasn't really worth
keeping.

~~~
i336_
Hehe. Gotcha. Thanks for the reply!

------
beschizza
Hi! Creator here. It's getting a good kicking right now so I took down the
"new post" page. Everyone's fyis are still live and well.

I wanted to make a publishing widget so minimal it would operate without fuss
on a $5 digitalocean plan, and I think I almost succeeded!

~~~
firefoxd
Hello creator. You can handle the traffic and db insert on a cheap digital
ocean plan.[1]

My server purred with hn traffic.

[1]: [https://idiallo.com/blog/handling-1-million-web-
request](https://idiallo.com/blog/handling-1-million-web-request)

~~~
philtr
For the record, firefoxd's static assets were offloaded to another server for
an additional $10/month. $15/month is still not bad, but I feel like this
comment is a bit misleading.

------
shopkins
Nice. Similar to [https://telegra.ph](https://telegra.ph),
[https://write.as](https://write.as), and [https://bold.io](https://bold.io).

~~~
wlkr
There's also [http://txti.es/](http://txti.es/) which is by the same creator
as [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

~~~
esMazer
> [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) this is
> pure gold! and check the end of the source... xD

~~~
rtehfm
And then there's
[http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/)

~~~
gkya
I HATE gray text. I haven't had a single book with gray on white, not a single
newspaper with gray on white, what is this gray-on-white trend in the
internet, I don't understand it. But that's illegible, that's an eyesore, and
if I were to have to read it, I'd first go to the dev console and change the
foreground colour.

>> Black on white? How often do you see that kind of contrast in real life?

I mean where these people live? Don't they read anything on paper? Don't they
look ad ads on the road, ads on TV. God, is this a plot on our eyes?.

~~~
tempodox
If it's well done, you don't immediately realize the text isn't exactly black.
You'd have to have a closer look to find that out.

The paper color of good books isn't glaring white, either, but has a slight
yellowish tint. FWIW, I think the background color of HN might be a nod to
that.

------
fiatjaf
Aren't people who visit Hacker News already familiar with a ton of ways to
publish anything they want instead of soon-to-cease-to-exist service that only
serves raw text?

I say this not to be mean -- I understand where you're coming from, I myself
have written a "pure plain text" service in the past and thought it would be
revolutionary due to its simplicity.

~~~
dvt
I don't think its author thinks its revolutionary (at least it doesn't send
off that kind of vibe). Just a neat personal project that some people might
find useful.

Pretty cool nonetheless.

~~~
komali2
Maybe it'll land the guy a job if he show it off during an interview. Who
knows? I like it, it's neat.

~~~
the_greyd
I think he already has a job at BoingBoing.

------
mc42
The whole "main" page being under 2kB is an adventurous thing indeed. Overall,
interesting implementation and incredibly clean layout (CSS is 541b.)

What languages are the site written in?

~~~
axon
[https://builtwith.com/txt.fyi](https://builtwith.com/txt.fyi)

Looks like C# possibly since ASP.NET popped up.

------
Kametrixom
Just a test: [https://txt.fyi/+/18d9428d/](https://txt.fyi/+/18d9428d/)

~~~
fiatjaf
Nailed it.

------
rrix2
Looks great, but it's sort of unfortunate that the author doesn't seem to have
seen the work on microformats[1] that the IndieWeb community has been working
on.

Being able to pull microformats out of the posts to reconstruct feeds,
automatically embed txt.fyi post summaries, syndicate to facebook/twitter/etc
(with comments backfed in to it) is super nice for low-bandwidth sites like
these, you can add a lot of useful value for little more a few extra HTML
classes. The core of a lot of this, the "webmention" standard is a W3C
recommendation, even.[2]

[1]: [http://indieweb.org/](http://indieweb.org/)
[http://microformats.org/](http://microformats.org/) [2]:
[https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/](https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/)

~~~
lexicality
Maybe I'm missing something, but after a quick look through the first two
links I have no idea what microformats are. Even the about pages appear to be
nothing but buzzwords and acronyms.

Is it like schema.org microdata?

~~~
tedmiston
The idea of microformats is giving some known structure to much of the
unstructured data used in pages across the web. The idea has a lot of
potential, but I don't know how much they're used in practice. There are a few
formats and microdata can be in the body of the html itself as attributes or
separate as JSON-LD. Google supports microformats for use cases like contact
information and restaurant reviews [1][2].

 _If_ they were used ubiquitously, there could be an obscene amount of power
in essentially being able to run one SQL query across different data sets on
multiple websites.

[1]: [https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-
struc...](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-
data)

[2]: [https://developers.google.com/custom-
search/docs/structured_...](https://developers.google.com/custom-
search/docs/structured_data#using-microformats)

~~~
lexicality
So the precursor to microdata?

------
tbirrell
I like the idea. I've used services like this before. I do wonder if
monospaced font is really the best route. It makes anything longer than a
couple hundreds words a pain to read.

~~~
searchfaster
Never realized how uncomfortable it is to read a paragraph of monospaced font
text, even though I read 1000s of lines of code in monospaced font without any
issues.

~~~
photojosh
No paragraphs of comments in your code? ;)

~~~
searchfaster
No.. may be my code is just not worth commenting ;)

------
Sephr
> no database

Incorrect. This uses storage on a server to store post data. When I first read
that I thought this would be a distributed p2p platform of some sort.

The p2p web platform being worked on at OFTN makes it very easy to create a
truly static version of this website (100% client-side p2p logic & data
distribution) without a server database.

You will be liable for illegal content uploaded to your server (when notified
of its existence), so you will be required to remove content from your server
when you receive court orders/DMCA takedown requests/etc. With a proper p2p
tracker-based system, you can simply forward legal proceedings to the ISP of
infringing users, and avoid the legal time sink involved with this kind of
site.

~~~
blhack
I think what they mean is that the files are stored as static files on a disk.

I believe most people would call this a "document store", to contrast it with
a RDBMS, or colloquially, a database.

~~~
derefr
It's not a _relational_ database, but it's a database. A filesystem, where the
directories represent tables and the files represent records, is effectively a
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_database_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_database_model).

------
bvrlt
> "Long live the independent web!"

I see how you can call this independent (eg. not a big hosting company), but
for me the independent web is people hosting their content and keeping control
on it. The ideal case is everyone hosting on their own machine (the old WWW?)

------
cyphar
I would consider [http://ix.io/](http://ix.io/) to be even more "dumb" than
this. And it has a command-line client too.

~~~
iso-8859-1
The age of ix.io (apparantly running since 2009) makes it a lot older than
almost all these services.

------
brilliantcode
small page size, secure static html file, loads fast and viewable on mobile
device.

What sorcery is this??! Page size is not even 1mb and there's no React front-
end component :)

~~~
overcast
The connection has timed out

The server at txt.fyi is taking too long to respond.

    
    
        The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.
        If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer’s network connection.
        If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

------
derefr
It's a pastebin, with somewhat-nice formatting.

I think half the "pastebin problem" has been solved by just avoiding setting
up your own backing store (and frequently your own input step), and instead
being a presentation-proxy for a more "raw" content-editing service, like
Github Gists. For example: [http://gist.io](http://gist.io)

There are a few services like that; what I'm still yearning for, though, is
one that either

1\. has a real design team focused on making its pages "read" well, like
Medium does; or

2\. _does_ have accounts, to let you set up a custom theme for your pages.
(Though you can be creative about this, for example by letting the Gist
include a JSON/YAML/TOML/whatever properties file that specifies the theme,
and by making the themes Github repos that the service just pulls and caches
on first use rather than needing to own itself.)

A service that offered either of these would finally fulfill the promise of
letting me separate "writing" from "blogging", such that I wouldn't really
need a "blog", just a microblog containing links to my own posts.

------
huula
I like the simplicity. But essentially this is something like pastebin right?

~~~
djsumdog
Yea, it's essentially a minimalistic pastebin for markdown

------
knolax
It can host more than just plaintext
[https://txt.fyi/+/36d433e6/](https://txt.fyi/+/36d433e6/)

------
alanfalcon
The monospaced font is a downer, but the clean colorful pixel logo makes me
happy.

Overall this strikes me as a project borne of a sweet domain name, but I still
dig it.

------
rusk
So I had a go of this. I pasted in Yeats' Second Coming [0] (feels somewhat
salient these days) to see how it looked [1]. For the most part it looks okay,
but visually it adds too much space between lines and the gap between the two
verses has been eliminated.

I guess what's happening here is the usual HTML thing of compressing all
whitespaces. I would just be concerned that if a plain-text medium is being
used then whitespace becomes more important for formatting and it should
perhaps be preserved.

[0] [https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/second-
coming](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/second-coming)

[1] [https://txt.fyi/+/f765eda5/](https://txt.fyi/+/f765eda5/)

------
averageweather
Is it wrong to be bothered by the lack of favicon?

------
Entangled
Not bad, a better font and a fix in markdown for fenced code and good to go:

[https://txt.fyi/+/39c4f224/](https://txt.fyi/+/39c4f224/)

Also, a way to make ninja edits with a cookie for 24 hrs.

------
kin
Legible is subjective. I personally find the font and spacing quite difficult
to read actually. Conceptually reminds me of an old writing platform I used to
use called QuietWrite. Loved it while it lasted.

------
mattbgates
Very simple, to the point. Great tool.

These types are becoming more popular for people who don't really care to blog
and just want to get something up quickly. I think pen.io were the ones who
pioneered the idea of it.

So many others followed and I wrote something similar:
[https://mypost.io/](https://mypost.io/)

It allows for much more user control including easy HTML and CSS usage with
the ability to set your own URL. It hasn't receive as much thrill as your
product has on Hacker News, but it is being used worldwide.

~~~
MJSplot_author
I just want to chime in and say that I've had a look and a quick play with
mypost.io and think it looks awesome. Like many of the links on this HN
thread, but with way more feature.

As you are allowing HTML entry, how are you protecting against Javascript
inside user created pages?

~~~
mattbgates
I appreciate your great feedback. I barely had any influence when writing it,
but all I knew was that I wanted to be able to write HTML and CSS -- and help
my visitors with learning the basics, without having to even sign up for an
account. All HTML is allowed though iframes seem to be so/so -- sometimes they
work, sometimes not.

There is certain Javascript that is allowed, but others I've had to disallow.
The way I've been able to allow it and monitor it is through BBCode. Basically
writing [script src=myjsfile.js][/script] or something like [script]alert('hey
there');[/script] is how you can get Javascript on a post but it does go
through a filter beforehand to scan for any potential harmful code. Trying to
write javascript the original way doesn't usually work.

At one point, I had Javascript as a main feature in the Advanced Options
section, but I've since removed it, as I saw its potential use for abuse. As
more and more users are using it from around the world, it's kind of
interesting to see the clever "hack codes" people come up with. For the most
part, I've mostly filtered out all "dangerous" code, but it still arises
occasionally as the Internet evolves and more people are clever.

Mainly with the hacks I've seen: people using it to redirect directly to their
own spammy websites. People creating divs that block MyPost but show a message
on top and you can't do anything but go to the person's website or link. I've
been able to filter these types of codes and prevent them from being entered
into a post. The thing with Javascript though, there are dozens of ways to
write the same code.

I even had to build my own captcha as people learned how to automate the
creation of mass-posts. Some Russian guy emailed me (it was in Russian, but
the translator basically told me he was pissed off because I added the
captcha), but I knew it was him who created about 2000 posts in less than an
hour. They then learned how to somehow bypass the Google Recaptcha and so I
ended up building my own, which fortunately, at the moment, has successfully
stopped bots from being able to automatically post thousands of posts at a
time.

I'd rather people use it for its true purpose: getting webpages up on the
Internet in seconds; learning how easy it is to code, etc. than to have
hundreds of thousands of "spam" posts on the website. So those have been my
battles since creating it: fighting bots and fighting people who are coming up
with clever ways to "hack it".

------
hrodriguez
> and know the form of your voice is out there forever.

Lots of these types of sites usually have some limit. That is, if the page
hasn't been visited in 6 months - out it goes. Curious what the time limits
are.

Also, unable to test (site under heavy load) but is there an edit link that's
made available after making a post? From the comments, that doesn't appear to
be the case. So if I wanted to use it as a knowledge base for something, I
wouldn't be able to keep updating it. I think this is the missing (basic)
feature.

~~~
Kametrixom
That's really the point, to be as minimalistic as possible. The less features
something has the less points of failure are possible. If you need a certain
feature, use something else.

------
travelton
Doesn't look like you're using it, but if so... This is leaking in the source:

define('NONCE_SECRET', 'XXXXXXXXXXXX');

Edit: Now that it's back live, you might want to change the secret.

~~~
beschizza
Thank you!

------
libeclipse
It seems to me like this is just a lightweight pastebin clone with some extra
privacy and markdown support.

I don't see the value. Feel free to enlighten me -- anyone.

------
ecesena
Sorry for being annoying, but the text area says "Write." and the button
"PUBLISH". I'd keep the same case and punctuation.

~~~
beschizza
I agonized over this, then forgot to fix it! I promise to do so soon

------
NoGravitas
[https://txt.fyi/+/834a4ca2/](https://txt.fyi/+/834a4ca2/)

------
isanganak
Most people publish something on the internet hoping it reaches as many people
as possible, otherwise what's the point?

------
wooshy
I like how simple and easy this is to use. At what point would costs of
hosting something like this become too much?

------
zhte415
Tried some ASCII art, but it appears multiple adjacent spaces get collapsed
into a single space, meaning this isn't the platform I was hoping for for
ASCII needs.

Plus, the line spacing eliminated the possibility for sane multiple-line
ASCII.

Definitely hipster not true oldskool. I will live and dream...

------
toephu2
"know the form of your voice is out there forever."

I doubt this site will still exist in 5 years.

~~~
beschizza
I promise that so long as I can pay my domain name dues and maintain backups,
the stuff posted to it will remain online e forever, even if posting new stuff
has to end for whatever reason

------
rosalinekarr
> no database

Where is the data being stored then? Some kind of key value store or
filesystem maybe?

~~~
mcpherrinm
If I had to guess, from a quick poke about:

You POST your uploaded doc to 'do.php', which renders into an html file and
puts it on disk, which is served by Apache. That's about as simple as you can
get. Let the web server do what it does best (serve files).

------
shmageggy
Since the site is already experiencing the HN hug of death, it makes me wonder
how doable it would be to make something like this but backed by a P2P store,
possibly verified by blockchain

------
aratno
Some markdown features aren't working, like code blocks and newlines (by
ending a line in double-spaces). Also, unknown routes don't 404 nicely; they
just hit the Apache default.

------
robotmay
A preview option would be nice but otherwise I like how simple it is.

------
imadfy
Someone is going to implement file storage using this. :)

------
bovermyer
Seems like a cool idea, and the creator is pretty responsive on Twitter. I
offered to assist with the infrastructure as a way of supporting the project.

~~~
beschizza
I appreciate it, too!

------
duke360
[https://txt.fyi/+/33ffa358/](https://txt.fyi/+/33ffa358/)

------
jpl56
I followed the links and got rickrolled. Wasn't it the real purpose of this
website? ;-) Great!

------
andreineculau
if anyone is interested in a on-premise minimalistic pastebin-like service, I
ended up writing
[https://github.com/andreineculau/tastebin](https://github.com/andreineculau/tastebin)

~~~
NickBusey
FYI The Demo link is broken.

------
GrumpyNl
Im getting this all the time This site can’t be reached

txt.fyi took too long to respond.

------
diiaann
Consolas is not the most legible option for reading non-code.

------
lettersdigits
great service (ux, speed, no bloated BS JS/CSS). But the domain is difficult
to pronounce (say) in my head, which is really bad, brand-wise .

------
greatNespresso
Just curious, how long did it take to build ?

------
ekevjn
Lady and gentlement:
[http://imgur.com/n4Qo0yb.jpg](http://imgur.com/n4Qo0yb.jpg)

------
nichochar
So, pastebin?

------
drops
Please work on typography.

~~~
allover
More specific typography tips could be more useful.

~~~
anonred
For starters, not using monospaced fonts for the article copy.

~~~
allover
That made it stand out. It might not have got to the front page of HN
otherwise.

------
vzaliva
Gopher reincarnation?

------
arisAlexis
how does it differ from pastebin?

------
esMazer
"Whoa there. txt.fyi's under heavy load. Come back soon!"

------
drivingmenuts
> Search engines are instructed not to index posts

Oh, I'm sure the internet archive guys will honor that request.

/facepalm

~~~
Qub3d
They do! If you create a "robots.txt" file [1] and use a disallow flag, they
will not scan the site.

Ex:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20070103112847/http://www.infocep...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070103112847/http://www.infoceptor.com/)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard)

~~~
nimchimpsky
lol, its always extra amusing when someones sarcastic, negative, unfunny, and
smug comment is immediately disproved.

~~~
drivingmenuts
Yep, my bad on that one. I was thinking of archiveteam.org.

