

Show HN: Harp Platform now available to the public - sintaxi
http://blog.harp.io/posts/harp-platform-now-public

======
cookrn
I really, really would love to give this a try but am totally turned off by
the requested "read and modify everything" Dropbox permissions. Although the
Harp application does a really good job explaining the limitations of the
Dropbox permissions API after a denial during the Dropbox authorization step,
I'm still not comfortable. I hope it's true that OP is working with Dropbox to
improve the situation as stated :)

~~~
fjabre
maybe I'm missing something but why not just signup for another dropbox
account and use that one for this instead?

~~~
kennethormandy
Yes, this is one option to work around Dropbox’s limited permission options
here. You can create another Dropbox account and link that to Harp Platform.
Then, share your application folder with your main Dropbox account and match
the directory structure (put it inside harp.io/apps/), and continue using the
Harp Platform normally.

~~~
silverlight
Ohhh! Gotcha! I'll do that!

------
taylorlapeyre
I still think that the harp product (brand?) is all over the place. From what
I've seen, harp is all of these things:

\- A command line utility for creating a preprocessing-enabled server

\- A static site generator like jekyll

\- A "front-end publishing platform" for Dropbox

This leads to poor understanding of exactly what "Harp" is and what it helps
you accomplish.

~~~
sintaxi
I can understand the confusion. Best to think of it like this, "Harp" is a
static web server with built in preprocessing. "Harp Platform" is a service
for running Harp apps in production.

\- "Command line" \- happens to be the way you access the web server.

\- "Generating static assets" is just a feature of the web server.

\- "Dropbox integration" is just a feature of the platform.

Hope that helps clear things up.

------
coderzach
Why do the build process (preprocessing) on the server?

~~~
davidascher
so that non-devs can do edits via editing, dropbox syncs, push using web UI,
and have the magic happen w/o needing devtools everywhere.

~~~
coderzach
Not really, they still have to have node, npm, and the harp cli installed to
use it locally. And if you're going through the work of doing all that, why
not just do the build step on the client.

------
drivingmissm
Should be "boat". Freudian slip!

"...and the community gets a bloat load of terrific open source libraries
along the way."

------
Touche
Looks good. Wish it wasn't tied to Dropbox though. I'd almost definitely use
it if I could work out of my own WebDAV server.

~~~
woah
Well, good news for you, you can run the harp server on your own hosting!
However, at that point I would just use the static site generator that I am
accustomed to (Wintersmith).

~~~
Touche
Oh, very nice!

------
_pmf_
I'm waiting until Dropbox pulls a Twitter-move and disallows third party
integration.

~~~
mgrouchy
I don't see how that would make any sense. Why would they do that? To me, it
seems like Dropbox wants to sell storage to people, the more things that plug
into Dropbox, the more storage they sell.

Twitter made a bunch of moves to limit third party integration because they
need to control the channel so they can sell ads to be displayed on the
platform, and display promoted accounts and tweets.

------
PaulHoule
"How to be an absolute zero when it comes to SEO"

~~~
thomaslutz
Can you elaborate?

------
mcantelon
Congrats!

