
Introducing Silvrback: Hosted, Markdown-Powered Blogging - dsowers
https://www.silvrback.com/dsowers/introducing-silvrback
======
photomatt
Don't pay attention to all of the comments saying there are enough blog
platforms in the world already -- they said the same thing when WordPress
started.

I signed up and paid to support the project, and even if you don't end up
doing this full-time we're looking for a Markdown hacker @ Automattic.

~~~
dsowers
Thanks. Hearing kind words from the founder of Wordpress is definitely
encouraging.

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jmduke
Just signed up. This is literally _exactly_ what I want.

The only thing I'd add is that I hope at some point down the line there's some
level of customization (even the ability to add an external stylesheet.) For
this kind of thing, I'm much more attracted to the backend than the frontend,
and the ability to tinker with fonts and what not is important to me.

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sravfeyn
I am very sad that, Medium as a platform is so completely misunderstood here.
It's not trying to be a place where writers are the center of attention. It's
one of the few attempts, I think is somewhat successful, in democratizing the
content, not the writer. I thought Quora was on it back in the day, but it
drifted off now, completely.

I am also not sure why anyone who is serious about his personal-branding as to
pay $29 would want to stick to a common-theme, especially when there are so
many free super-customizable alternatives. People who are serious enough to
pay might as well consider paying someone else to design the personal-theme
and have it setup with Markdown somewhere for free.

What's even more disheartening is to see someone who is such a skilled person
to ram up the themes from Medium and setup a product with such ease, is the
person who misunderstood the Medium and add more product-clutter into the
market, indifferent to the work of the designers of Medium with a great and
noble vision.

Edit: I said 'misunderstood' because of following

> _Medium is great for readers but it is bad for writers._

I am sorry, but it's great for writers, you don't need to be among the elite
to share an idea with world. And that's something very powerful.

~~~
felideon
With regards to "branding", I agree with this comment elsewhere[1]:

> _I think the 'brand' problem people have with Medium is less "my post looks
> like the same as all of these other posts!" and more "when people want to
> read more of my posts, they're more inclined to go to medium.com instead of
> my personal site!"._

Medium is a very compelling product, but it isn't for everyone. I'm not sure
what your argument is, other than "Medium is misunderstood, so people should
not create similar offerings."

I think the OP understands Medium, and opted to create something that would
suit his needs as well as possibly others'.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6251620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6251620)

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billpg
Looks interesting, as I'm looking at alternatives to blogger for my new site.
Going down my checklist, you'll support a custom domain and comments (via
disqus).

Here's what's left unticked on my checklist...

    
    
       Image hosting. (Will you host my pictures or do I have to find external server space for them?)
       RSS/ATOM feeds.
       Multiple writers on a single blog.
       Mobile theme.

~~~
dsowers
Thanks.

It supports image hosting. I didn't want to have to upload images to another
server somewhere. It even supports multiple versions of your images (e.g.
retina and regular).

It's fully responsive so it's good for mobile.

I have RSS on the roadmap, but it won't be there on day 1. Have too many
things to do right now. It also won't have support for multiple writers on day
1.

~~~
3825
How much does it cost? The pay button leads me nowhere.

    
    
        <a href="#" id="payment_btn">
            <i class="icon-credit-card" style="margin-right:10px">
            </i> 
            Click Here To Enter Payment Information
        </a>

~~~
dsowers
Hmm, that's weird. That button opens up a stripe payment overlay. Do you have
javascript disabled?

~~~
3825
I think I forgot to disable NoScript. Sorry about that. I should have tried it
in Chrome as well. I just assumed you were still working on the details...
like money.

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oneplusone
This lacks a lot of the nice things that makes Medium great. Just off the top:

1) The sidebar's navigation feels bloated and useless at the same time. Needs
to be tighter and more useful. Why not put the last five posts' title in
there? Move the social icons in there as well, they are super distracting
floating on the right side. Simplify the page presentation.

2) The footer of the site should link to the post I made before this one.
Similar to how medium links to a random post.

3) The hover effect on the list of posts is brutal. Way too harsh. The list
itself is also weird. Why do I care when it was last edited? Show the subtitle
if there is one instead.

4) Medium putting the author bio at the top is really nice. Same with who
helped you write it and last updated. I miss it in your design. Medium also
has a much better homepage with a really nice bio bar.

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pdonis
Am I the only one who thinks it's weird to be writing blog posts inside a web
browser? What's wrong with a text editor? Is it just the "publish" button? Or
do people find it actually helps the writing process itself? (It doesn't for
me, I edit my blog posts locally and push them with rsync when they're ready
to publish.)

~~~
jmduke
I currently use Jekyll + GitHub Pages. The work involved in correcting a one-
character typo is annoying if I'm on my laptop, but nigh-impossible if I'm on
my phone.

~~~
alabut
Can't you just edit the file directly on Github? It's what I did recently with
a one word typo I noticed while I was out of town and only had my phone.

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duck
This looks interesting, but I find the name choice odd since there already
exists [http://silverbackapp.com](http://silverbackapp.com).

~~~
newbie12
There's also SilverStripe, a pretty well known CMS.

[http://www.silverstripe.com/](http://www.silverstripe.com/)

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nether
What circumstances would cause you to shut down this project in a year or two,
and how likely are those circumstances?

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Morphling
I don't mean to be negative, but why should I pay $29/year for blogging
platform when I can install something like Jekyll on a free Heroku (or insert
your favorite PaaS) and host my posts on another free blogging site, like
Tumblr.

Basically I'm asking what's so great about Silvrback over other free
alternatives?

~~~
smacktoward
If you can install Jekyll or set up your own VPS and find the prospect of
having to do so to have a personal blog enjoyable rather than a hassle, you're
really not the target customer for these sorts of things.

~~~
Morphling
So, it's convenience? Which is okay, I guess I'm just so used of setting up
stuff like that, that I didn't even consider it a "restraint", but now that I
think of it I can see how for some people it's not worth the time to struggle
through the setup process and just pay the fee.

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felideon
This looks great, and I've been wanting to start blogging for a while now. I
hesitated on the $29, even though it is not much because, why pay for
something I possibly will not use (e.g. I never get around to writing anything
more than a few, if any, posts).

But then I realized (a) I would not be charged until receiving an invite, and
(b) if I've put money down for this, that alone puts some pressure on forcing
myself to write.

So I've signed up.

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doctoboggan
I recently started looking for a markdown powered blogging platform to host my
site[0]. I wanted to be able to write markdown documents, arrange them in
directories, and then have a site built from that. Also, I am not a designer
so I would like it if there were premade themes out there.

I settled on using Pelican[1] for generation and Github Pages[2] for hosting.
Pelican does exactly what I wanted, and there is a collection of free
community created themes that look great. Github Pages is absolutely free
hosting that even supports custom domains.

It might take a little more hacking than Silvrback, but I have been slowly
working on a git repo that anyone could simply clone, populate with markdown
files, and then push. I need to clean up the few scripts a little, but if you
want you can find it here[3]

[0] [http://jack.minardi.org](http://jack.minardi.org)

[1] [http://docs.getpelican.com/en/3.2/](http://docs.getpelican.com/en/3.2/)

[2] [http://pages.github.com/](http://pages.github.com/)

[3]
[https://github.com/jminardi/jminardi.github.io](https://github.com/jminardi/jminardi.github.io)

~~~
SkyMarshal
Octopress, Jekyll, Hakyll and probably a ton of others do the same thing,
manage gh-pages hosted blog.

That said, if you care about branding and outreach, Silvrback appears to offer
value beyond what the free alternatives do.

~~~
gbrits
Not to be sarcastic, but what is offered beyond the free alternatives exactly?

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glenbo
I like the idea a lot, and I like the UI and aesthetic. From a writer's point
of view though, you're marketing page and these requests for info in the
comments seem too focused on the tech details. I would guess that bubbling up
the problems you're solving here for writers on your marketing message would
help you gain more traction.

Sure, talking about servers, backends and all the nitty gritty is great fun
and what I'd expect from HN absolutely, but the goal of writing is to
communicate an idea to others, and how well you're service solves that problem
will greatly pique my interest. The tech behind it is fun and important, but
less so to solving the core problem of writing/communicating.

For example, I'd love to hear this expanded upon: "I built Silvrback because
none of the existing blogging platforms satisfied me completely."

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MaxGabriel
I'm glad I learned about typography and CSS so I could do my own blog, but if
I hadn't this is exactly what I wanted. Is there an example of code formatting
anywhere?

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jstalin
At least it loads quickly, unlike Medium which seems to get stuck for a few
seconds before it renders the entire page.

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Arnor
I just set up a new blog using Pelican. My considerations were much like what
you've listed. The price point seems right as well. I'm tempted to sign on,
but my workflow is holding me back. I've got my Pelican based blog set up so I
never have to leave Vim to write/organize/publish. Every other workflow I've
tried for blogging has quickly decreased my output to... nil.

It seems to me if I switched to Silvrback I'd have to either use the admin
interface to write (I assume it doesn't have Vim keybindings) or copy and
paste from Vim.

~~~
stevejohnson
I did the same thing, and I really love Pelican. Silvrback does about 80% of
what I need for [http://steveasleep.com/](http://steveasleep.com/) but that's
more like 100% for most people.

To me it's actually easier to write a post in Vim and then 'make gh-pages' to
push it to the internet. But I don't count that against this service at all.

The main reason I won't be using this service is that I pop out more open
source projects than blog posts, and my site is more about project commentary
than blogging, so the "post" format doesn't really work for me.

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dubcanada
I don't really understand the desire to have more blogging platforms, there is
already like 15 billion.

However I do prefer this style to Medium/ what ever that s one is.

~~~
loudandskittish
I've been playing with a lot of blogging platforms lately and they're all bad
in some way. Having more options is good.

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stevejohnson
Great idea and execution. You're filling a need that many people have and
nailed the design. Naturally, this thread is full of legitimate suggestions
for improvement, but you've got an excellent first iteration.

I'm not quite the type of person who needs your site, but I'm close enough to
recognize its value. Keep it up and pay no mind to the "Why not X instead?"
people. This is unique and worthwhile.

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dxm
So a price has been placed on an almost exact copy of Medium without the
benefits of Medium (an existing readership, existing capital), it's a copy
right down to the typeface and even the green coloured buttons. How does one
have complete control over their brand with Silvrback? There's no ability to
customise the design beyond what already exists. There's nothing marketable
about this product yet.

~~~
dsowers
This is nothing close to an exact copy of Medium. I spent a ton of time on
this UI. It's definitely inspired by Medium. I'm not hiding that fact.

~~~
robotmay
I agree; it's really not that similar to Medium. Medium don't have a trademark
on off-black text on an off-white background!

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dustingetz
hosted is good but i require the option to easily host it myself (like github
pages).

My content is my life and I want it to be around in 40 years. Even if facebook
bans my account for a TOS violation where they changed the terms out from
under me. Even if google hands my account to law enforcement because another
country's government doesn't agree with my free speech.

I need to own my content.

~~~
dsowers
You can export your posts at any time with Silvrback. You have full ownership.
That's why I'm making it a paid solution, otherwise there would be the risk of
your data being sold to advertisers.

~~~
dustingetz
it needs to be trivial to rehost. I've been through a blog content migration
before, it was difficult enough that I didn't bother to migrate a portion of
my data.

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SkyMarshal
Do you have a "data liberation" type policy? Eg, if someone wanted all their
content, how do they get it out?

I've gotten burned by that before with Blogger and Posterous, and now use
Octopress for this reason. Open to better alternatives, but need a clear and
easy way to get my content back out if I ever decide to change services.

~~~
StavrosK
_My_ idea of the perfect system would be something hosted that would allow me
to have a shared folder in Dropbox, Google Drive or something like that. It
would have two folders, drafts and posts, and putting a markdown file in
either would publish it as a draft or a post.

I've looked at a few static site generators, but there are some dynamic things
I want to do, so, for now, my own, custom-built blogging engine
([http://stavros.io](http://stavros.io) for the curious) is what works best
for me.

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robgough
I've signed up, I'm hopeful it will spur me to write and worry less about how
it looks.

Have you given any thought to being able to import existing posts that are in
markdown format? I'm currently using scriptogr.am and have a number of posts
that ideally I'd like to import.

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miguelrochefort
I made Mardown-Powered SkyDrive-Hosted blogging platform a few weeks back.

All you had to do is claim a username/url (by navigating to it), login with
SkyDrive and start adding markdown files to the "StratosPress" (name of the
service) directory in SkyDrive. No need to manually sync/push/publish. Just
save and as soon as the file gets synced, your blog post is updated.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to use SkyDrive. And even if they did, who would
give a random guy on the internet access to all of their SkyDrive files. I
know I wouldn't. Too bad there's no way to restrict file access to third-party
services.

Silvrback looks alright, but it still seems a bit too bloated to my taste. I'm
not sure why exactly.

~~~
StavrosK
This issue can be solved with Dropbox (you can make an app which doesn't have
access to the rest of the files). See above for "my ideal blogging system",
it's pretty much this. I may have to add support to my blogging system for
this.

~~~
miguelrochefort
You mean Calepin.co?

~~~
StavrosK
Something like that, I spent a few hours last night and added Dropbox
integration to my blog, and it's fantastic. Much superior to online editing
interfaces.

------
iancarroll
What about [http://tryghost.org](http://tryghost.org)? How is this going to be
any different?

~~~
davidcollantes
It is a hosted solution and you pay for it, for starters. Ghost will be open
source, you host it.

~~~
joeblau
Ghost will have a hosted platform as well [1].

    
    
      * November 2013 - Release of the hosted platform to Kickstarter backers
      * January 2014 - Release of the hosted platform to the general public
    

[1] - [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost-
just-a-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost-just-a-
blogging-platform)

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jordanlev
This looks great! Do you plan to support comments? I know it's a difficult
thing to do so I'm not expecting that, just curious. I also know about Disqus,
but that is no good for a technical blog since they took away the ability to
post code samples a year or two ago.

~~~
romain_dardour
With a minimal amount of work, dsowers could implement support for hull.io and
implement comments exactly as he'd want to - disclaimer: I work there.

------
joeblau
On a related note, I found an app called Haroopad which is a cross-platform
offline Markdown editor[1]. It even supports some GitHub flavored Markdown.

[1] - [http://pad.haroopress.com/](http://pad.haroopress.com/)

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davidcollantes
Could you provide more details? How many servers, where is the data stored,
what type of support will you offer, is it an LLC, how many people behind it,
company roadmap, application roadmap, what happens with it if you die
tomorrow, etc?

Thanks!

~~~
dsowers
Good questions. I will follow up with a blog post addressing these issues.

------
dmarusic16
Looks like nice execution and everything, but guys, I have to ask, is
Wordpress really that hard to set up? Copying Medium's theme shouldn't be THAT
much work...

~~~
rzimmerman
Wordpress is easy to install if you're already familiar with setting up a LAMP
stack. A lot of people who just want to blog are not. It's easy to get running
and install themes, but honestly it's almost a full-time job to keep it
running right. You have to keep up with security updates and deal with
confusing config options for custom domains. wp_config, Apache, and MySQL are
not something you can use casually.

Also, performance is terrible unless you cache aggressively, which most people
don't because it's a lot of work, even with W3. The nice thing about real
hosted solutions is they can handle extra load if it happens.

I get why it's popular. The blogging interface is very good, but trying to
setup/maintain a server makes me want to pull my hair out.

~~~
photomatt
There's no reason you need to maintain all of that -- do a one-click install
someplace like Bluehost, Dreamhost, or ZippyKid and they'll manage everything,
and do core WP upgrades as well automatically. There's also WP.com.

All are more expensive than 29/yr though.

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cgag
I don't really understand the existence of these blog services aimed at
developers when so many thousands of static site generators and rsync exist.

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donniezazen
Do you think WordPress has outlived its utility as a personal blogging
platform? I am planning to move my blog from WordPress to something more
simpler.

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andyhmltn
Looks quite nice, but do you really need a loading indicator for an image of
your logo that's a single colour?

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artgon
I like the idea but I still prefer using Github pages for my blog. Not to
mention it's free.

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moneyrich2
cool - thanks. i almost wrote the same thing, alas... i had other priorities.

will defintely check it out, but if i dont like it... you might have some
competition

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ozirus
Why not Posthaven?

~~~
teamonkey
For a start, their launch page has terrible typesetting and no useful info
about their service.

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ErsatzVerkehr
Will you offer MathJax support?

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cgman
How do I leave a comment on his blog? WTF is up with people disabling
commenting... if you don't want any feedback then I don't care to hear what
you got to say.

