
Show HN: HackPad is the best wiki ever - orph
https://hackpad.com
======
king_magic
I really don't like that I have to sign in with Google or Facebook to try it
in read/write mode. Read-only mode is not good enough for me to tell if it's
something I want to use, and ___having_ __to use Google or Facebook just to
_try_ it is a dealbreaker for me, sorry. Which is a shame, because it looks
neat.

Fix that, then I'd be interested in giving it a try.

 __ _Edit:_ __I missed the ability to sign in without Google/Facebook. It was
a bit too small to notice. That being said... I signed up and gave it a try
anyway, despite my misgivings. It's a neat product.

~~~
StavrosK
About your login issues, I integrated BrowserID to a project I'm working on
the other day, and my god, am I in love. BrowserID.org is beautiful and very
well made, easy to use and easy for the users to understand (you don't really
realize you're at a third party website).

Integration with django took about ten minutes and I don't have to wrestle
with all the forgotten password templates and workflows, changing passwords,
storing them securely, etc etc any longer. Also, it doesn't depend on
Facebook, Google or anyone else (if I want to run the verification myself).

I really hope it catches on, and I'd strongly recommend it to any dev.

~~~
mintplant
BrowserID looks interesting, but what about on public terminals? The average
user may not understand that they're logged in to your site _and_ BrowserID,
and as such would leave themselves mistakenly logged in.

See the BrowserID demo site - <http://myfavoritebeer.org/> \- as an example of
this. Once you're logged in, the "logout" button does not truly mean logout -
anyone could log you back in in two clicks.

~~~
StavrosK
That's a good point, they need a "public terminal" option at browserid.org.
I'll email them now.

However, considering that it's pretty easy to add two-factor authentication to
the provider (in this case, browserid.org) using Google's open source
libraries or any other way, I'd say this is a huge net plus. After all,
logging in via Google, Facebook, Twitter or any other such provider has the
same weakness.

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michaelw
Thank you for making this. I really like it.

A long time ago in a startup far far away a friend and I built something like
this. Ours was nowhere near as elegant. We would look for CamelCaseWords to
kick off the autocomplete but your use of @ is much better.

Delightful moments: pasting an image url embeds the image. Consider letting me
backspace the image to get back to the url.

The multi-user edit seemed very smooth. Better than collabedit to this user.

The task list is nice. I'd love to have a title to the task list and be able
to query for and surface all task lists across pages.

Please consider supporting #hashtags if only so you can show a tag cloud. The
built-in search is great.

I couldn't figure out how to link to a person.

Finally, for users who login with their own email address, please consider
letting them in right away. At most have the confirmation step be something
they can complete later. Eliminate friction at every turn.

All in all a really nice product.

~~~
michaelw
Came across Dropbox integration but couldn't see it doing anything.

~~~
kofman
It lets you insert shared links to any file in your dropbox by typing @ in any
pad - it'll autocomplete by file name.

~~~
michaelw
Got it. Nice.

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jff
Unfortunate that they don't offer the software itself; I could use this at
work, but I don't think we'd be allowed to use it on an external server.

~~~
kofman
If there's demand, we'll definitely consider offering this.

~~~
X-Istence
Confluence is the wiki we use where I work and I absolutely hate it (ending
tags is like you are opening a tag, so {bold}this would be bold{bold}
(example, I don't remember any tags off the top of my head).

If something better came along that helped us rather than slowed us down it
would be fantastic.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Oh god. I helped support an overly customized Confluence wiki that was to be
THE wiki for the entire company one summer. I quickly grew to hate the
software quite strongly. Took me a while to be objective about JIRA's other
products when I used them later.

~~~
X-Istence
JIRA is the bug tracking software. Atlassian is the company.

JIRA is absolutely terrible as well. I can't express in words how much I hate
and dislike JIRA, it's horribly slow and bloated user interface and how
complicated it makes certain tasks... using it as an Agile tool makes it even
worse especially with Greenhopper the add-on.

~~~
modoc
Lots of people here seem to dislike Confluence and Jira. What do you folks
prefer?

Having used Bugzilla, Trac, Mantis, MediaWiki, and several other tools I 100%
prefer Jira and Confluence...

~~~
timc3
Redmine here. Currently loving it. Tried lots of others but the multiple
projects and the fact that I could use plugins helps. BaseCamp was by far the
worst for me.

~~~
hboon
Could you elaborate what's wrong with Basecamp?

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wmat
This is an interesting project, however, as someone who administers several
wikis, both public and private I honestly wouldn't give up control of the
server side to the cloud ever. The simple reason is data control. I want daily
backups of my wiki data. Can I do that with this?

Similarly, where's the source?

Where's the install for private wikis, such as a company's private internal
wiki?

Where's the api so I can write plugins?

Where are the plugins?

What is preventing wiki spammers?

Can I theme this for groups?

I see that groups are 'private' based on my invitations to them, but how can I
be sure this isn't easily compromised?

Anyway, this looks interesting, but I don't think it can be used yet for any
serious wiki work.

~~~
kofman
> I want daily backups of my wiki data. Can I do that with this?

Yes. We back up hourly, and we give you a way to get a full html zip dump with
a single http request.

> Similarly, where's the source? / Where's the install for private wikis, such
> as a company's private internal wiki?

Hackpad is not open-source but would a jar or VM you can run internally do the
trick?

> Plugins? Nothing yet - we hope to make something

> What is preventing wiki spammers? Private instances are invite-only (or can
> be setup to automatically let people with certain email domains in), there's
> also revision history etc.

>Themes? Not yet.

>I see that groups are 'private' based on my invitations to them, but how can
I be sure this isn't easily compromised?

Hackpad always runs on https and we take security seriously. Outside of that
as I said - if there's interest we may offer a jar/vm you can run inside the
firewall.

Thanks for the feedback / questions!

------
alx
if you look for something similar and opensource, you should have a look at
etherpad-lite: <https://github.com/Pita/etherpad-lite>

------
netghost
It looks neat. Why does it want access to my google contacts?

~~~
kofman
See the response just below

~~~
kzrdude
but comments move around depending on votes.

------
AdamGibbins
Why does this request access to my Google Contacts when signing in using my
Google Account? No thanks.

~~~
kofman
We do it in order to let you auto-complete your contact's names in order to
invite them to pads. We absolutely never email your contacts unless you
explicitly invite someone. That said we understand your concern and hence
offer the regular email sign-in option.

~~~
moss
Consider saying this explicitly during the sign-up process! I avoided using my
Google account to log in, but I probably would have gone ahead and done it if
I'd known that you weren't going to email my contacts.

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silverlight
Very neat. I actually had a similar idea 2 or 3 months ago (although I'm sure
this is older than that) to modify Etherpad Lite into a wiki to replace the
Dokuwiki we currently use at work. I was going to just build a front-end that
managed the documents, though, and only pass it off to Etherpad for the actual
editing. This is a much more elegant solution, and the "@" linking is genius!

If you were ever considering contributing your modifications back to the
community/Etherpad/Etherpad Lite, I would certainly make good use of them.
Unfortunately our wiki is a highly integrated component of our custom-built
Intranet, so we couldn't make use of a SaaS solution for it. But congrats all
the same! I will keep an eye out for potential non-work uses.

------
PabloOsinaga
People seem to be liking it. What I think they like (at least that's my
experience with it) is to see the HN community materialize in real time.

Just my 2 cents so that you can try to isolate feedback taking that into
account.

~~~
msellout
Good point. It's very much fun to see more realtime interaction with a forum.
You feel less like a lurker and more like a real participant. Still, I think
that in itself is good feedback about the product more generally--how you
market it--rather than about the specific features.

------
damncabbage
Quick note: read-only mode isn't very read-only. Pasting and typing quickly
still works.

I clicked a checkbox within the page copy, and the entire page suddenly
blanked. (It may have just been a coincidence, though.)

Otherwise, looks great. :)

~~~
orph
This is probably an IE bug?

~~~
heyitsnick
I can do this in Chrome windows. I can check a checkbox or type a few letters;
I get a popup saying "sign in to make edits", but my changes still happened. I
can dismiss the popup and again type in a few more letters before the blocking
popup.

------
grusk
I really like the execution of this. It's like the Quick Notes web extension,
however my beef with Quick Notes app is that I've lost some notes because I
didn't realize that there might be a maximum character limit (not sure if
there is or if my notes got wiped some other way).
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mijlebbfndhelmdpml...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mijlebbfndhelmdpmllgcfadlkankhok)

Could you make this into a Chrome web app, please?

~~~
thamiam
Yes, please. I would really like something to replace sidewiki for capturing,
sharing, and later finding notes about Web sites.

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jv22222
With regard to saying "the best wiki ever".

I think it's best to show that its the best product (by being the best) rather
than to explicitly to say it.

~~~
tensafefrogs
Or just pull a Fox News™ and add a question mark to the end:

Hackpad: The best wiki ever?

------
WA
It's nice. But how do I delete my account and my Google contacts that were
imported in your database?

~~~
orph
We don't store Google contacts on disk, so they will disappear with a couple
days of account inactivity.

~~~
WA
Okay thanks. Still, can I somehow delete my account?

------
wslh
Nice, seems like they are taking some of the features of Microsoft OneNote to
the web (checkboxes)

------
bjtitus
This looks very interesting! I hope you guys keep improving it. I really would
like something like Google Wave/Etherpad that is robust and is actually being
developed.

I would happily pay money for something like this if the performance and
features can be maintained.

------
colinhowe
This is nice. I'd love it if I could create a company account, invite my
colleagues and then know that only those people can access the pads that we
make.

Also, ability to download all data as a dump would be nice.

------
tathagatadg
Is it possible to embed a hackpad in a site? I really looked around for an
embed-able etherpad that can be easily made available into pages for users to
collaboratively note down stuff ...

~~~
beza1e1
You could use any Etherpad Lite site [0]. Probably also works with the "heavy"
Etherpad.

[0] [https://github.com/Pita/etherpad-lite/wiki/Sites-that-run-
Et...](https://github.com/Pita/etherpad-lite/wiki/Sites-that-run-Etherpad-
Lite)

------
extension
Some iPad bugs: I can type newlines and backspaces, but no characters. And
when I leave the site, my keyboard stays open on whatever site I visit, which
is really strange.

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jakobe
I think the best feature of a wiki is that you can edit it anonymously without
logging in. I just won't bother contributing to wikis that require logins.

------
moss
This is really slick! It's the first realtime, WYSIWYG tool I've used that
still feels like a Wiki.

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slig
Is it based on Etherpad source?

~~~
kofman
Yep

------
duncanj
Pricing?

------
rorrr
How is it different from EtherPad and hundreds of its clones/instances?

~~~
irondavycole
Designer of EtherPad here. I'm a big fan of HackPad and I encourage people to
give it a shot. I get a lot of questions about the best version of EtherPad
out there, and HackPad is the one I recommend.

It might not look that different, but they handle similar features in smart
ways.

~~~
timc3
Would be interesting to know which features?

~~~
kofman
Some of hackpad's features are: task-lists, inline linking and page creation,
simple image embedding, search, deep email integration, dropbox integration,
mobile (iphone,android) support, an osx launcher/search app. The way hackpad
handles basic editing and authorship annotation has also received a lot of
attention and iteration. Play with it and let us know what you think!

~~~
ilaksh
Inline linking and page creation, image embedding, and search are plugins that
are part of the etherpad source and just need to be enabled.

When you say it supports iPhone, does that mean you somehow made the
contentEditable issue go away and can edit on iPhone, or is it just read-only
support?

~~~
kofman
iPhone support is currently in beta. Basic editing works but it's fairly easy
to break.

------
dbbo
Except for that stubborn 504...

~~~
kofman
Fixed, sorry!

