
Wallabag: a self-hostable application for saving web pages - ProfDreamer
https://wallabag.org/en
======
bharani_m
Wallabag is a solid alternative to Pocket. The founder's interview on
IndieHackers [1] is pretty nice. They seem to be making around $350/mo from
their hosted service.

I also wanted to throw in a link to a similar service that I run called
EmailThis ([https://www.emailthis.me](https://www.emailthis.me)). Instead of
having to create an account on another website and installing additional apps,
EmailThis works by sending the web page (after stripping ads and clutter) to
your email.

[1] [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/wallabag-
it](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/wallabag-it)

~~~
dredmorbius
I've been meaning to give Wallabag a shot, and might actually have the
wherewithall to do that now.

I'd used Readability, until it shut down (and still have nearly 800 articles
now identified only by its rdd.it URL shortener, which is to say, utterly
useless to me).

I've been using Pocket for the past two years or so. Unfortunately, the more I
use it, the worse it gets.

The basic webpage simplifier aspect of it is fine. The problem is that an
archive with more than 100 or so entries in it is effectively write-only. The
abililty to search and utilise the store is all but nil.

I've over 6,000 articles saved, with the goal of supporting a research-
oriented trove of previously-viewed, vetted, and categorised articles.

It takes several minutes to scroll through my set of tags. _There is no text-
based incremental search._ Nor any other form of text-based search. And that's
just the tip of the iceberg.

The one saving grace so far is the ability to export a list of URLs and tags,
though working with that takes considerably more effort.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_it_gets_worse_the_more_you_use_it/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/688oc9/pocket_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/688oc9/pocket_the_worsening_continues/)

~~~
zimpenfish
Pocket Premium does offer full-text search -
[https://help.getpocket.com/article/882-pocket-premium-
faq#q2](https://help.getpocket.com/article/882-pocket-premium-faq#q2)

However it was completely useless for me the handful of times I tried to use
it.

~~~
dredmorbius
I mention that in the articles -- I'd had the freebie version of that for a
while.

One very unhappy moment was when that went away without notice -- service
downgrades are sort of the exact opposite of "underpromise, overdeliver".

And ... the search was at best only marginally useful, as you note.

The _other_ antipattern aspects of Pocket, as well as the absolute failure to
progress in anything remotely like a useful direction, are exceedingly
disappointing.

~~~
bharani_m
Can you also give EmailThis a shot?

As I've written in the FAQs [1], one of the key advantages of EmailThis is
that you don't rely on any external service. So if a service like Readability
goes down, you don't end up losing all your saved bookmarks.

Regarding search & filtering, if you are using Gmail or Outlook, you can set
filters that automatically move incoming bookmark emails (that EmailThis
sends) into specific folders based on keywords/tags.

You can also leverage the fulltext search that your email client provides.

[1] [https://www.emailthis.me/pages/faqs#instapaper-
readability-a...](https://www.emailthis.me/pages/faqs#instapaper-readability-
alternative)

~~~
dredmorbius
I really like the concept, and have strongly considered such a service.

The problem is actually email. I no longer trust it as a secure and private
facility.

I've thought of maintaining a _local-only_ email archive as an alternative,
which kind of works.

Alternatively, if you were willing to support PGP, and not include metadata in
the subject line, that would be an option.

Other than that, I think the idea and service are excellent, and thank you for
it, it's just not for me :(

------
joekrill
Wow not sure why there's so much hate in the initial comments here. I've been
using Wallabag for months now as an open source replacement for Pocket and
it's been great. They've got great mobile clients, too, which is really what I
was looking for. It's not _perfect_ -- some articles get scraped incorrectly
or incompletely, but that's fairly rare. Overall this is a great open source
project that I haven't really seen getting much press for some reason.

~~~
thehardsphere
I don't understand why there's so much hate for asking basic questions about
what the point of using Wallabag is. I am asking questions because I don't
understand why this would be appealing. I am not suggesting people should hate
it.

~~~
reitanqild
Try phrasing your question differently:

"This seems very similar to what I can do for free in Chrome using
extension/hack/little know default functionality xyz - am I missing
something?"

Now I'm not saying we should put soft blankets around everything we say but in
this case it would be more useful for us to read (if you have a good solution)
and indicates that you are aware that the rest of us might have found
something useful that you overlooked.

------
mmjaa
I have a po'-mans version of this: I print everything to PDF.

From PDF, I can grep/grok/sed/convert to my hearts content.

So okay yeah, my po'-mans document/information-organization-system consists of
a bit of muscle memory and judicious use of ^-R to get to the ol' grep. But ..
true fact .. if you do the info-management at the command line, it scales.

GUI's don't, whether they're web or otherwise.

------
j_s
The discussion 3 months ago on bookmarks mentioned several options for
archiving pages (some locally): _Ask HN: Do you still use browser bookmarks?_
|
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14064096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14064096)

extensions: Firefox "Print Edit" Addon / Firefox Scrapbook X / Chrome Falcon /
Firefox Recoll

open source: Zotero / WorldBrain / Wallabag

commercial: Pinboard / InstaPaper / Pocket / Evernote / Mochimarks / Diigo /
PageDash / URL Manager Pro / Save to Google / OneNote / Stash / Fetching

public: [http://web.archive.org](http://web.archive.org) /
[https://archive.is/](https://archive.is/)

------
dredmorbius
Request / recommendation to the Wallabag team: please provide a video or
slideshow (I'd actually prefer the latter, mostly) which shows an advanced-use
workflow.

The wallabag.org video shows ... pretty much nothing of any value.

I checked YouTube and found several "how to install" vids, but nothing showing
actual use.

As I've described in an earlier comment (and extensive posts at
[https://dredmorbius.reddit.org](https://dredmorbius.reddit.org)), for someone
who's looking for a true archiving tool with research interests, and for whom
porting an archive of several thousand (or more) references is not a trivial
undertaking, lowering the ramp to understanding the value of this tool is
crucial.

Thanks.

------
nvivo
After looking at the website, it still took me some time reading the comments
to understand what it does. It's an open source version of pocket you can host
yourself, and if you want, they host for you for 12 euros a year.

It's interesting, but pointing to the product page instead of the github
project page makes it look like advertising a paid pocket competitor with no
apparent advantages.

------
andybak
Perfect fit for sandstorm.io - although making it that easy to self-host might
undermine their business model.

Although - it's getting pretty easy to deploy things in a bunch of different
ways nowadays. If your business model is entirely based on "I don't want to
host this myself" then there's a chance it might be increasingly fragile.

~~~
the_common_man
Already on cloudron -
[https://cloudron.io/store/org.wallabag.cloudronapp.html](https://cloudron.io/store/org.wallabag.cloudronapp.html)

~~~
M-arcus
It's here:
[https://cloudron.io/store/org.wallabag.cloudronapp.html](https://cloudron.io/store/org.wallabag.cloudronapp.html)

Cloudron in General is pretty goof. They just released the 1.0 version.

------
rufugee
This looks very interesting and like something I'd love to use, but I'm not
sure it's functionally complete. For example, saving this thread to it gives
me this: [http://imgur.com/a/VFQ45](http://imgur.com/a/VFQ45). None of the
comments appear...

------
emsy
I had Wallabag on my VPS (more than a year ago) but there were issues with the
session cookies where I basically had to login every time I wanted to access
it. This was so tedious I stopped using it. I hope this has been resolved now,
I really liked Wallabag.

------
asciimo
What is up with the background music for app demo videos these days? These
cute, jaunty, almost childlike melodies all seem the same to me and I'm trying
to think of where I first heard the trend. Was it Apple in the late 00s?

------
kkotak
Any comments on [https://www.dropmark.com/](https://www.dropmark.com/)?

------
xfer
Noone has mentioned webrecorder.io, which is what i use to archive pages.

------
baal80spam
Need to register just to actually see and try out the application? Just no.

~~~
amelius
Also, why is this on a .org domain?

~~~
motdiem
It's an open source project - the source is available here
[https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag](https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag)

~~~
amelius
Ok, I stand corrected. But to be honest, the webpage looks so much like it's a
business that I can't blame myself for being fooled here ...

------
thehardsphere
Why should I pay 12 Euro a year to do something I can do in Chrome for free?

~~~
sametmax
\- You don't have to pay, you can self host.

\- You may want to access your bookmarks outside of chrome.

\- You may want to access your bookmarks when you are not in a safe machine.

\- You may want an API for your bookmarks.

\- You may not be using chrome.

\- You may care about your privacy and want to split the data stack about you
among as many providers as possible.

~~~
thehardsphere
> Self host

That's more expensive than the 12 Euro when you factor in the time I would
have to spend to do that.

> Outside of Chrome

Ok, substitute Chrome for any browser. How is this better than reading the
saved webpage off of a hard disk?

> Not in a safe machine

If the machine is not safe, why am I using it at all?

> API

To do what, exactly?

> may not be using Chrome

Every browser now has a "Save webpage, complete" feature. It's not a Chrome
thing.

> privacy

There's nothing more private than my hard disk.

~~~
roblabla
You might have missed the point. This allows you to share saved webpages
accross machines. The save webpage, complete feature saves it to your hard
drive, locally. What I want is to be able to save pages from my desktop, and
read them from my android phone.

~~~
thehardsphere
I definitely missed the point; that's why I asked what the point is.

Thank you for clarifying that the thing you want that this software provides
is the ability to synchronize saved content across multiple devices of
different platforms.

