Show HN: Static web hosting, CMS, and now blogging

by dbla • 12 years ago

78 24 12 years ago

"No need for FTP, SSH or any other three letter acronyms." - other than DPI, I suppose!

dbla7• 12 years ago

Haha good point! We are actually considering supporting FTP as well at some point but we're still investigating to see if it's something our customer base would like. That sentence might need some tweaking soon.

Osmium• 12 years ago

Looks like a great service. Just tried the CMS and it works beautifully; much better than the only other similar CMS I've tried (CushyCMS–which requires SFTP).

Perhaps a niche request, but are there any plans to add HTTP basic access authentication to select pages? I'm currently running a super simple static site for a research group, and I need a way to make a semi-private web page. Nothing properly 'secure' but more a method to prevent casual snooping. (I could set up my own web server, but I need to set up a website/system that other people are still able to look after once I leave.)

dbla7• 12 years ago

That's a great question. We're at an interesting spot where we have to decide whether we want to stick with our basic service and become a company that provides really good hosting and services for small-business websites, or if we want to take on the giant behemoth that is WordPress, while still trying to hold on the the simplicity of the concept. If we go the second route then we'll be building out a plugin system that would definitely make it possible to build something like you described.

In the mean time, our blogging system has the ability to create unpublished posts that are only visible to content editors (individuals that you invite to manage the website). It's kind of a hacky solution but it might work for you.

silentrob• 12 years ago

@DBLA, It is great to see more services like this. I'm one of the guys behind Harp.js and Harp Platform. We have a lot in common! Basic Auth was a question that came up all the time and wasn't to challenging to add, as well as lock in - which was addressed by Open Source. Hope it goes well.

elyase• 12 years ago

Really well thought product, I can attest that this responds to the basic needs of a typical web design shop. A couple questions:

1-Does billing work internationally? I imagine you probably accept CC but is there any associated fee?

2-I see you have a blog an a team of 4, but, is there any other guarantee you can give related to your stability as a service before I start switching clients?

3-Can I bill a custom amount(more than 5 USD) every month (to account for support, etc)

dbla7• 12 years ago

Thanks for the questions.

1-Yes we're using Stripe and a good chunk of our current customer base is international.

2-This is a tough one for a start-up, and it's certainly a question we've gotten before. If we were to promise to open source the software if we ever shut down the service would that be sufficient? It's not a promise we have made yet, but I think it's something we could commit to.

3-Great idea! No, but this is something we should build out. I'm adding it to our dev backlog.

bsmith• 12 years ago

Aaron & team, congrats on the front page! You guys should do a HN traffic/signup teardown for us after a few days have passed. I would love to see your numbers!

dbla7• 12 years ago

Will do!

moinuddinkmu3• 12 years ago

http://getsimplesite.com is a very good CMS which is very help full for designers. And these people also develop websites in a good price and website is of good quality.

oneeyedpigeon• 12 years ago

Hmmm... any interest to declare?

themegamind• 12 years ago

Tried the trial version of getsimplesite.com. It looks quite fast and cheap. Models look wonderful to accept/display content on website dynamically.

moinuddinkmu3• 12 years ago

give a try on getsimplesite.com

tiffanyh• 12 years ago

@dbla

Your pricing goes from $5/mo. to Call us for pricing.

Call us for pricing implies super expensive.

That seems like a big jump in pricing.

Just my 2 cents.

dbla7• 12 years ago

You're right. We really need to work on our pricing model. Thanks for the suggestion!

8ig8• 12 years ago

Add the "900-edit" class to any element

I was under the impression that class names could not begin with a digit. Some discussion on it here...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/448981/what-characters-ar...

NewsReader422• 12 years ago

Classnames cannot begin with a digit, an oversight these bafoons have not clicked on yet

stickhandle• 12 years ago

I always find these kinds of projects interesting ... then inevitably I'm reminded that having a server is a playground and can be fun. NGINX is easy (for 80 of 80/20 part anyway). SFTP/SSH too.

pizza_boy• 12 years ago

Very similar to CloudCannon (http://cloudcannon.com/)

funkyy• 12 years ago

Just to make this clear - are the files hosted on your platform, or on dropbox? And what are the limits of your free accounts (if any)?

I see your site says you offer hosting - but I am getting confused a bit as there is no complete feature list on your website - just lengthy documentation.

Do you have some traffic limits?

Do you have bandwidth cap/space cap?

Are pictures etc. hosted on dropbox or your servers?

Congrats on front page and good luck!

NewsReader422• 12 years ago

They claim fast - all of the websites in "Powered by" are painfully slow.

dbla7• 12 years ago

Care to elaborate? I ran some tests and page speeds seem to be quite a bit faster than what google reports as their global average. Short write-up here: http://900dpi.com/blog/Tech-Talk/How-fast-is-900dpi-We-put-o...!

moinuddinkmu3• 12 years ago

Simple Site frees you from the restrictions imposed by your hosted content management system. It allows you to run arbitrary javascript on the server to build your website. As a developer this means you don't have to jump through the hoops of a templating language forced upon you by your CMS.

Show HN: Static web hosting, CMS, and now blogging

Related Stories