xhfloz

Creator of mmm.page here. Let me know if you have any questions.

Re: laggy. I know... 1.0 introduced new features but also inefficiencies. The cost of working on something solo. Releasing a patch soon.

Hey! FYI haven't seen anything in my inbox yet.

Left my job in 2020 to do the same. Nowhere near as profitable as OP, but now make enough to cover rent + basic expenses in New York. Crucially: I didn't want to do hypeman social media content that (a) sold the dream of solopreneur as a marketing tactic, or (b) added excessive noise into the ether.

I'm not saying Tony did either -- I haven't followed along -- but certainly a lot of people do. I can't fully blame the people who do, though.

Anyway. The project I've built [1] is still going, and I feel proud of it on merits of software: that it pushes the bounds, however slightly; that it feels good to exist in the world; and that I genuinely care for the people using it.

All that's to say: I think there's a software solopreneur path that doesn't involve excessive hype, gross self-promotion (some degree of self-branding is necessary though), while allowing you to work by principles and also explore interesting software problems.

Feel free to DM me [2] if you have questions, or are interested in bootstrapping your own project. Especially consumer-facing. I do have some writing online [3] that covers this too.

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[1] https://mmm.page

[2] https://twitter.com/xhfloz

[3] https://woolgather.sh

* Those hotkeys should work (follows Figma's example). * A very high priority. * Yeah... I plan to let people disable click (e.g. pointer-events: none) on elements, but automatically detecting transparent overlapping areas is a bit more work.

Ohh. I misread this. I thought you meant auto-save the editor. Now my response seems glib. Absolutely -- I should at least warn people when they try to exit the drawing view.

That is not an unfair assessment. Hopefully 1.0 irons out the kinks.

TIL

Currently working on the ability to copy and paste the underlying blocks into your own editor (with owner’s permission) —- big believer in popping the hood!

Long term dream is to have the HTML output look good enough that people can edit at both WYSIWYG and code levels.

Mobile Chrome on what OS?

I love kids' mmm.page sites

https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1633159802745417752

What's your device spec? I have November blocked out for optimizations.

That is on the roadmap :)

Creator of mmm.page here — thanks all for the attention. I woke up wondering why traffic suddenly spiked...

I recently created a newsletter [1] to write and experiment more a la "An Internet Canvas." Feel free to give it a read.

You can also find me on Twitter [2], and support my project via patronships [3].

Oh, and go explore all the other sites people have made [4].

[1] https://woolgather.sh/issue/1

[2] https://twitter.com/xhfloz

[3] https://woolgather.sh/patron

[4] https://explore.mmm.page

It could do with a heavy perf pass tbh. Haven’t had time juggling all the feature work, but it’s planned for 1.0. Mind letting me know what machine you’re on?

Unfortunate compromise of not paying for font licenses — and google fonts is the most extensive collection of free fonts.

As for fonts — it’s unideal! Those initial fonts are actually just the glyphs subset of fonts so I can display their names in the font picker. It’s already somewhat cut down by separating the fonts into basic and all, as well as delaying the load a few seconds after initial load, but still a lot to fix up there.

Not VC-funded :)

As to charging an (optional) paid plan, unfortunately, I have been bootstrapping this full-time the past few years, and because I can’t till my own land anymore, have to find the least terrible way of exchanging labor for money, such that I can pay for food and bills.

That being said, there is a free tier for this very reason, as I remember all the free services that got me started initially. Hoping to make this tier more generous once the project is profitable.

Let me know if you have other ideas. If I can (a) pay for business costs (accounting, APIs, hosting, etc), (b) pay for my bills, (c) attain a and b w/ incentives that align with my users and the principles of the project — I am all ears.

Oof. I take it that’s not a great thing.

The page shared here was a read-only version. The editable version is at: https://paper.mmm.dev

(But due to some iFrame hackiness, it doesn’t work in incognito.)

Thank you! Curious — how did you find out about mmm initially?

Thanks for sharing original link — had not seen that project before. I’ll refrain from commenting on their funding, but fyi is mmm.page is wholly bootstrapped (which has left a healthy dent in my savings over the past three years haha).

So if you enjoy the project, or want to support some of the researchy aspects of it, please consider upgrading!

I have another article in the works about the importance of independent funding models and slow growth incentives w/r/t organic social networks, and projects that necessarily require slow exploration as a community (not, in contrast, “spaces designed by committee”).

Oy. Author of this. Surprised to see this here. If you’re curious, recently launched beta [1] and also wrote up a “why” to the project [2].

Also: a StumbleUpon-like explore experience of pages created using mmm.page [3].

[1] https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1653740562648821760?s=46

[2] https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1631746024120221698?s=46

[3] https://explore.mmm.page

Oh, amazing! I am planning my travels for this year -- I just might :) And thank you for the kind words.

One fundamental design principle of mine has been to be minimally prescriptive with the interface of mmm.page, so that people can create whatever they want. If that means 90s throwback, then I won't go out of my way to prevent that.

That being said, I have my thoughts on nostalgia-mining [1], and in short, believe that a more interesting visual culture today requires a more contemporary approach.

For example, one of my favorite pages is a page of hand-drawn comics combined with GIFs made by a kid [2], another is a cleverly-designed page on "soft tech" [3]. Here is an illustrative thread comparing link-in-bios and mmm.page sites made by the same person -- it's surprising how much tools can limit our self-expression [4].

Personally, I get excited when I see these examples -- a departure from the grid-confines of contemporary web design. In theory, nothing about "letting people create pages with as much freedom as possible" intrinsically = "90s web with blinking GIFs all over".

Let me know if you have any other questions.

[1] https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1631746051295117313

[2] https://littlebookfair.mmm.page/oneoneone

[3] https://helena.mmm.page/soft_tech

[4] https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1649508702523645956

Heyyo. Creator of mmm.page here. Fun to see it mentioned. In case it's of interest, I've been coming at this from a more GUI perspective: scriptable objects (like paper) [1] and social primitives [2].

Excited to see where this project goes.

[1] https://paper.mmm.dev/

[2] https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1611094168981458981

Thank you! Let me know if you have any questions :)

Thank you! They have been a huge source of inspiration.

Okay. Confirmed live now. That was quite the boneheaded move on my part lol.

Wow. I can't believe I let such a large bug slip by -- must have happened during a deploy this morning. I've just pushed out a fix.

I built mmm.page [1] originally for personal websites, or "internet canvases."

They're meant to be pages for very easy combinations of text, mixed media, embeds, etc. — let more people create fun/interesting places on the internet. [2]

I started working on mmm.page in Feb 2021, and launched it that May on Hacker News [3], then it hit $2k/mo last year, and has been growing steadily since. There are roughly 30,000+ users at the moment. Revenue has been trickier for this project because it's a SaaS aimed at consumers, who are more price sensitive — but the flip-side is I love working with all the people who use the platforms. Just today, someone shared this moodboard that captured exactly how I've been thinking about it mmm.page [4]. Some other fun examples here [5]. I'm planning a second launch in May. Hopefully some good news to share there.

One note: it's a website, and most people edit it on desktop, but a surprising # of users convert /after/ trying it on mobile. I also found the conversion rate increased significantly after I made the homepage itself editable — thereby demo'ing the product without a login. Just a small note.

Anyway, feel free to reply or DM on Twitter if you have questions — especially re: solo bootstrapping "fun" consumer products that are trying to also become self-sustainable.

[1] https://mmm.page

[2] https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1631746024120221698

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128424

[4] https://diemichi.mmm.page/moodboard

[5] https://showcase.mmm.page

I hear you. For what it's worth, I do specifically caution against the nostalgia-driven rose-tinting (https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1631746051295117313).

A few other notes.

1. I don't think the point of design and color and a rich visual culture is just to be "not boring" and "erratic" and look at me! I'm so random! It's closer to why we appreciate public art installations, beautiful architecture, well-designed parks. So on. If we spend a large chunk of our lives online -- whether or not that is good, is a separate discussion -- then I believe we should care a great deal about how that space is presented. Whether we feel it's inhabited by other people, instead of mega-corps -- is important. Imagine if the real world became just a super-sized mega-mall.

2. We absolutely /should/ focus on the list of concerns you mentioned. I don't think it's either/or though (I'm happy to hear arguments for why they're mutually exclusive). I am, as part of mmm.page, working on a few things that will help people create private spaces just for their friends.

Let me know if that addresses your concerns.