

Show HN: We built an easy way to create online guides and tutorials - shlomib
http://stps.co/

======
antocv
We need a guide and tutorial "How to leak safely, precautions and
considerations"

Im writing it here because I dont want to register for another web site. I
want to write a guide ,not deal with registrations usernames, validations,
logins, ugh.

0\. Find and use a safe computer to investigate about leaking and
whistleblowing, or make your computer safer by using a Live operating system
such as Linux - it basically runs your computer from a USB-stick and is safer
than using your normal devices.

1\. Get familiar with information security by using duckduckgo.com and
wikipedia to search and find about following keywords, Tor bundle, I2P, https,
PGP.

2\. Find or probe a journalist at the guardian if you want to put your face
behind the leak/whistleblowing, which ads more trust. Or if you choose leave
it to wikileaks to protect your identity but they will manage the contacting
with journalists for you, contact any journalists or wikileaks regarding
mundane issues to setup trust, so that you are certain you're talking to the
right person, and then begin talking using Tor bundle and PGP.

3\. Dump your data on wikileaks or mail a USB-stick with it to several
journalists, trusted friends. Learn how to make an encrypted file and put it
on thepiratebay or any other torrent tracker. Email encrypted to two
persons/journalists each half of the pasword to the file. This is your life
insurance.

4\. Run for it.

~~~
simplify
With regard to the pain of creating yet another account, I really do believe
Mozilla Persona is perfect for websites like this one. All they need is your
email address, and Persona protects your privacy by only providing this
information.

I honestly can't wait to see a future where almost all non-social websites use
Persona as their login system. We'll be able to create accounts with only a
single click.

~~~
antocv
I dont understand why they need my email address or "Persona"?

Wouldnt a captcha be good enough, prevent spam and user can choose to provide
a nickname/handle. Just click and go.

What are you guarding by requiring a password/credential of the user? Is it
really that important who wrote what for this kind of service? If its
seriously important, such as to stop spam, use the IP or cookie to identify a
user and keep spammers/saboteurs out, it would catch 99.9% of them while
letting us normal users click and play around.

------
Trufa
The idea if freaking great, and beautifully executed, I will try to use it
myself and share it as much as possible, that said, I have two problems before
I start using it.

I don't think I will be able to do so for my work without the ability to
export... (Just as an idea, when exporting to a pdf, for example, the embedded
youtube videos should be turned into links instead).

Finally, I would need an option for the guides to be private/shareable,
otherwise we would be limited in the things we could use it for, maybe that
could be a premium paid service, that could be a reasonable monetizing
strategy (github like).

But again, I'm excited about this tool and think it has great potential.
Thanks for this!

~~~
ozkatz
Hey, thanks for the input! As I've said before, export and offline access are
both on our TODO.

Your comments on private vs public guides are great. It's something we
discussed and we will put a lot of thought into getting this part right.

~~~
Trufa
Awesome, congrats on the app again, I hope you make the most out of it!

I'm interested in knowing what kind of technologies is this built on, do you
have a technical blog or some technical data anywhere?

~~~
ozkatz
You can check out my personal blog at ozkatz.github.io - I'll be writing about
it soon, probably.

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xpose2000
These just look like blog posts to me with numbers. Am I missing something?

~~~
ozkatz
Yea, we wanted to keep the display simple. The biggest difference would
probably be the ease of creating these guides (along with media such as inline
videos, images, maps and more) and publishing them.

------
eterm
you hereby grant Summer a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free
license, including the right to sublicense, to use and disclose such comments
and suggestions in any manner Summer chooses and to display, perform, copy,
have copied, make, have made, use, sell, offer to sell, and otherwise dispose
of Summer's and its sublicensees' products and content embodying such comments
or suggestions in any manner and via any media Summer chooses, but without
reference to the source of such comments or suggestions.

No, no I don't.

Any chance we could choose how to protect or not our own work? Flickr for
instance has a very useful set of licenses to choose from including all rights
reserved. I get that this isn't quite like Flickr, but giving up the above
rights seems a little too much.

~~~
bradleysmith
Thanks for pointing this out. Do you have a URL to where you found this?

~~~
eterm
[http://stps.co/accounts/legal/terms/](http://stps.co/accounts/legal/terms/)

Under the heading "Intellectual Property Ownership"

~~~
ozkatz
Thanks for the feedback guys. I see how this could be a problem. We'll look
into relaxing the terms and allowing you more control over your data.

------
p8952
Can guides be viewed offline? Perhaps allowing users to export them as PDFs?

I'd hate to put in weeks of work only to find my work lost when I need it due
to network issues, the site closing, ect.

~~~
ozkatz
not at the moment, but it's a great idea. We oppose vendor lock-in of any kind
- so we'll definitely look into adding offline access and export features.
Thanks!

~~~
p8952
Nice!

A couple more things I noticed after a short play around:

* It's not obvious how to (or maybe even not possible) to find a list of your published guides.

* It's not obvious how to (or maybe even not possible) to delete your published guides.

* You have to publish your guides right away, I doubt anyone wants to read my first draft.

* Your source code editor does not accept tabs which means everything has to be copied and pasted in. Have you though about using something like ace? [https://github.com/blog/905-edit-like-an-ace](https://github.com/blog/905-edit-like-an-ace) / [https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace](https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace)

~~~
ozkatz
For now deleting and browsing through guides is not yet possible. Obviously
both will be added very soon.

We thought about Ace, actually, but we weren't sure yet if people will end up
using stps for source code. We will probably look further into this in the
future though. Thanks!

------
johndavi
If you could help standardize the size of screenshots / images that would be a
great value-add. Could be as simple as a cropping tool upon upload that offers
an automatic crop selection matching dimensions of previously uploaded image
sizes (or that of the first image).

E.g., if my first image uploaded was 300x400, make that an automatic crop-zone
for subsequent uploads.

------
k33n
The landing page is great. A few really nice little details that are well-
executed. Signup process is easy, and the app is easy to use.

I love that you can embed videos and other stuff in it. Would make it easy to
create and publish a step by step guide on how to change the oil in a car, for
example.

Great work!

~~~
ozkatz
Thanks! glad you found it useful.

------
schrodingersCat
I agree with p8952, pdf export would be great. Having integration with
services like pocket or readability might make sharing easier also.
Alternatively, you could add ifttt support and let the user choose their own
service. Great job! I will be using you service.

------
cinbun8
Nice work. Some ideas for features.

* Ability to export to PDF / HTML / ZIP.

* Offline mode - (Which can be actually be achieved through HTML export)

* Public / Private guides

* Send guide via email

* Link to a step in another guide.

~~~
reinhardt1053
I would add: make the website responsive

~~~
ozkatz
coming soon :)

------
josephlord
"Use of the Service shall be solely for your own, private, non-commercial
purposes and for no other purpose whatsoever."

Also the terms of service seem to indicate that you own everything created
although I may have miss parsed that one.

------
tonetheman
Interesting. The site looks nice. I need a way to go back and edit or finish
my guides. The ability to export to a PDF would be nice too.

I started one and did not finish it, I ended up having to publish it anyway...

Either way interesting idea.

------
spektom
Great idea! It would be nice if one was able to start creating guides without
registering with the service.

------
dominotw
This looks very clean. Is there an open-source self hosted equivalent to this.

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danmaz74
Is the not-vertically-aligned design by choice? It's very disturbing IMHO

------
gesman
Can i see samples of beautiful guides to get excited to build one myself?

~~~
ozkatz
There are a few guides featured on our home page, scroll down a bit.

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frankcaron
The tech writer in me is losing his shit over how cool this is.

------
danecjensen
This is great. What tech are you using?

~~~
ozkatz
Hey, thanks for the interest - I'll be writing about it soon on my personal
blog - [http://ozkatz.github.io/](http://ozkatz.github.io/)

------
josephagoss
Any chance for adding mathematics? :)

~~~
ozkatz
Maybe! We'll add it to our list of things to think about :)

------
bryanjos
This looks great! Good job!

