

Show HN: A Really Simple Blog Platform - sfard
http://www.throwww.com/

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bpierre
Nice! I like simple websites like this, with a clear purpose, and no
authentication (I built <http://scri.ch/> some times ago, it allows users to
quickly draw sketches and share them).

Do you plan to generate revenues, and if so, how?

Your logo reminds me of a mix between Sparrow and the Svbtle logos:

<http://sprw.me/mac.php>

<https://svbtle.com/>

Keep up the good work!

~~~
sfard
Thanks, man! (assuming you are a man).

Nice scri.ch btw. You still working on it?

And as for revenue etc, I just built this for fun last week cause I was tired
of how Posterous kept getting more bloated every time I used it. No thoughts
about this as a business, really.

~~~
bpierre
I am a man :-)

I’m still working on it occasionally (it’s an Open Source Software):
<https://github.com/bpierre/scri.ch>

I asked for the revenue because we thought about it after the initial scri.ch
release, but we came to the conclusion that there is no real market here. It
does not matter: we built it for fun and we are using it a lot!

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keithpeter
Nice to use, simple.

<http://www.throwww.com/a/w>

is a repost of mine to test, feel free to delete. I only posted anon as I have
no twitter acount

1) How do I edit an anonymous post once made? Perhaps a cookie allowing
editing from the same IP as posting for half an hour? Do twitter log ins get
to edit?

2) How is the url scheme going to grow. 26^2 at present. Will it be 26^n
automatically?

~~~
sfard
Thanks, and why would I delete it?

1) You can't edit anonymous posts as of right now. Good suggestion though, I
could just use a unique identifier to allow you to edit within the same
session. If people besides me actually start using this, I'll definitely add
that. 2) Yah, it's 26^n

~~~
keithpeter
"Thanks, and why would I delete it?"

No reason just the idea that when you 'launch with ordinary people' having
tonnes of 'testing posts' might be annoying?

I like to use a little formatting now and again, italics &c. So I will try
that in a bit.

456976 for four letters should keep you going for a bit :-) Er, are you going
to _skip over_ certain three and four letter urls?

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laacz
That's interesting. There is a trend with this kind of sites (I've seen at
least one here on HN before). Is it some evolution of joint anonymous
blogging/microblogging/pastebins? Or is it driven by an experience - I want to
try blogging, let's start by writing, not registering, configuring, skinning,
etc?

I don't believe that this might catch on, but as a branch of online self-
publishing it could still live a little.

~~~
sfard
I think the trend you describe could be put in terms of disintermediation of
web properties. Facebook, for instance, tries to be a platform that does
everything. But much like real life, products are beginning to specialize
because niche products can just do a better job at meeting the needs of a
segment. That's why I disagree with you that this is just a trend.

~~~
laacz
Point taken. I would still argue that most people would not go to bare post
composer to write. Personal blogs and websites fill this space. Of course,
there are lots of those, who like minimalistic and distracion free
environments.

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GavinB
Have you considered centering the text in the page? This looks good on a
laptop sized screen, but on a widescreen monitor it feels very odd to be so
far over with half the screen white.

There's nothing wrong with it this way, it just feels slightly off because
it's different from most blogging platforms and news sites.

Otherwise, love the simple design and philosophy.

~~~
sfard
You know, I tried centering it and it looked "off" to me. Just my eye, though.
I'd be curious if others feel the same. Anyone else's thoughts?

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webwanderings
Nice and simple is back in the business, however, this service could leverage
more useful activity if you'd allow it to extend the twitter, i.e, something
like tweet-longer type of service. Too often people have more than 140
character to say and something less than a paragraph or a blog post.

~~~
sfard
What do you mean by extend the twitter? As in post the first part of the
article on their behalf?

I was thinking of something like that, but wanted to make the use case as
general as possible so people can decide how they want to use it. Maybe I'm
wrong :S

~~~
webwanderings
Well, yes. The thing is, it is practically impossible to trust a stranger
service for writing/jotting-down thoughts on a service like this. It is simply
hard to build and depend on it (you gave an example of Posterous - it was
something I stopped trusting within few months).

I don't know about the technical solutions, but the way Branch currently
integrates with Twitter, the way you can be conversing on Branch and still
your conversation spills over Twitter...is what I have in mind in terms of
this type of simple blogging service. The paragraph or couple of sentences
should spill over to Twitter, and/or the Tweets should spill over to this type
of service. All this not necessarily in a way it is currently setup by other
platforms (like Wordpress, you can cross-post blogs to Twitter) but something
naturally with least effort and distraction.

Am I making sense? There may be some services out there providing this
experience, but ... anyways.

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jamiecurle
Nice, I'm working on something similar myself and it's also in Django.

You might want to switch off DEBUG=True in your settings if you're expecting
HN to come knocking :)

~~~
sfard
Thank you, and good call :)

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leeHS
I really like this. Clean and simple. Would be nice if I wasn't forced to use
twitter to track my blogs though. What about an equally clean and simple user
dashboard?

~~~
sfard
The original use case I had in mind was to allow twitter users to write more
than 140 characters. I've since drifted away from that, and a plain ol' user
registration option might make a lot more sense now.

As for user dashboards, there's just this for now <http://throwww.com/u/sfard>

~~~
sachleen
You should make "1 more articles by sfard" a link to take you back to your
user page. I missed the list on the right at first glance.

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vacipr
I love this.Is there any place we can report bugs or suggest new stuff ?

Also I can't login with twitter atm.Anyone else having this problem ?

~~~
sfard
Sorry, I forgot to change a variable in my settings file, so Twitter was
calling back to my local machine. Hence it worked for me but no one else.
Fixed now.

As for bugs, for now you can email me... saeidm[at]gmail.com or @sfard on
twitter.

Much appreciated!

------
sfard
<http://www.throwww.com/a/1>

Here's why I built Throwww.

~~~
presidentender
It links to '1 more articles,' even though it's the only one.

My anonymous post was immediately "viewed 2 times."

This is still a nifty little tool.

~~~
sfard
Yah, hypothetically there should be more there. Just kept it in there for now
to show that "more articles" shows up when you post with twitter. Though I
really shouldn't have been so lazy and just written a 2nd article.

And thank you!

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kidmenot
Clean and simple. I really like it. Thank you, man.

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astrojams
Twitter auth didn't work for me.

~~~
sfard
Damn! Thanks for letting me know. Can you tell me what, if anything, it says?

~~~
astrojams
Redirected to an internal page: 127.0.0.1:8000

~~~
sfard
Whoops, forgot to change some settings before deploying. Should work now.
Thanks for the catch!

