Don't pay attention to all of the comments saying there are enough blog platforms in the world already -- they said the same thing when WordPress started.<p>I signed up and paid to support the project, and even if you don't end up doing this full-time we're looking for a Markdown hacker @ Automattic.
Just signed up. This is literally <i>exactly</i> what I want.<p>The only thing I'd add is that I hope at some point down the line there's some level of customization (even the ability to add an external stylesheet.) For this kind of thing, I'm much more attracted to the backend than the frontend, and the ability to tinker with fonts and what not is important to me.
I am very sad that, Medium as a platform is so completely misunderstood here. It's not trying to be a place where writers are the center of attention. It's one of the few attempts, I think is somewhat successful, in democratizing the content, not the writer. I thought Quora was on it back in the day, but it drifted off now, completely.<p>I am also not sure why anyone who is serious about his personal-branding as to pay $29 would want to stick to a common-theme, especially when there are so many free super-customizable alternatives. People who are serious enough to pay might as well consider paying someone else to design the personal-theme and have it setup with Markdown somewhere for free.<p>What's even more disheartening is to see someone who is such a skilled person to ram up the themes from Medium and setup a product with such ease, is the person who misunderstood the Medium and add more product-clutter into the market, indifferent to the work of the designers of Medium with a great and noble vision.<p>Edit: I said 'misunderstood' because of following<p>> <i>Medium is great for readers but it is bad for writers.</i><p>I am sorry, but it's great for writers, you don't need to be among the elite to share an idea with world. And that's something very powerful.
Looks interesting, as I'm looking at alternatives to blogger for my new site. Going down my checklist, you'll support a custom domain and comments (via disqus).<p>Here's what's left unticked on my checklist...<p><pre><code> Image hosting. (Will you host my pictures or do I have to find external server space for them?)
RSS/ATOM feeds.
Multiple writers on a single blog.
Mobile theme.</code></pre>
This lacks a lot of the nice things that makes Medium great. Just off the top:<p>1) The sidebar's navigation feels bloated and useless at the same time. Needs to be tighter and more useful. Why not put the last five posts' title in there? Move the social icons in there as well, they are super distracting floating on the right side. Simplify the page presentation.<p>2) The footer of the site should link to the post I made before this one. Similar to how medium links to a random post.<p>3) The hover effect on the list of posts is brutal. Way too harsh. The list itself is also weird. Why do I care when it was last edited? Show the subtitle if there is one instead.<p>4) Medium putting the author bio at the top is really nice. Same with who helped you write it and last updated. I miss it in your design. Medium also has a much better homepage with a really nice bio bar.
Am I the only one who thinks it's weird to be writing blog posts inside a web browser? What's wrong with a text editor? Is it just the "publish" button? Or do people find it actually helps the writing process itself? (It doesn't for me, I edit my blog posts locally and push them with rsync when they're ready to publish.)
This looks interesting, but I find the name choice odd since there already exists <a href="http://silverbackapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://silverbackapp.com</a>.
I don't mean to be negative, but why should I pay $29/year for blogging platform when I can install something like Jekyll on a free Heroku (or insert your favorite PaaS) and host my posts on another free blogging site, like Tumblr.<p>Basically I'm asking what's so great about Silvrback over other free alternatives?
This looks great, and I've been wanting to start blogging for a while now. I hesitated on the $29, even though it is not much because, why pay for something I possibly will not use (e.g. I never get around to writing anything more than a few, if any, posts).<p>But then I realized (a) I would not be charged until receiving an invite, and (b) if I've put money down for this, that alone puts some pressure on forcing myself to write.<p>So I've signed up.
I recently started looking for a markdown powered blogging platform to host my site[0]. I wanted to be able to write markdown documents, arrange them in directories, and then have a site built from that. Also, I am not a designer so I would like it if there were premade themes out there.<p>I settled on using Pelican[1] for generation and Github Pages[2] for hosting. Pelican does exactly what I wanted, and there is a collection of free community created themes that look great. Github Pages is absolutely free hosting that even supports custom domains.<p>It might take a little more hacking than Silvrback, but I have been slowly working on a git repo that anyone could simply clone, populate with markdown files, and then push. I need to clean up the few scripts a little, but if you want you can find it here[3]<p>[0] <a href="http://jack.minardi.org" rel="nofollow">http://jack.minardi.org</a><p>[1] <a href="http://docs.getpelican.com/en/3.2/" rel="nofollow">http://docs.getpelican.com/en/3.2/</a><p>[2] <a href="http://pages.github.com/" rel="nofollow">http://pages.github.com/</a><p>[3] <a href="https://github.com/jminardi/jminardi.github.io" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jminardi/jminardi.github.io</a>
I like the idea a lot, and I like the UI and aesthetic. From a writer's point of view though, you're marketing page and these requests for info in the comments seem too focused on the tech details. I would guess that bubbling up the problems you're solving here for writers on your marketing message would help you gain more traction.<p>Sure, talking about servers, backends and all the nitty gritty is great fun and what I'd expect from HN absolutely, but the goal of writing is to communicate an idea to others, and how well you're service solves that problem will greatly pique my interest. The tech behind it is fun and important, but less so to solving the core problem of writing/communicating.<p>For example, I'd love to hear this expanded upon:
"I built Silvrback because none of the existing blogging platforms satisfied me completely."
I'm glad I learned about typography and CSS so I could do my own blog, but if I hadn't this is exactly what I wanted. Is there an example of code formatting anywhere?
I just set up a new blog using Pelican. My considerations were much like what you've listed. The price point seems right as well. I'm tempted to sign on, but my workflow is holding me back. I've got my Pelican based blog set up so I never have to leave Vim to write/organize/publish. Every other workflow I've tried for blogging has quickly decreased my output to... nil.<p>It seems to me if I switched to Silvrback I'd have to either use the admin interface to write (I assume it doesn't have Vim keybindings) or copy and paste from Vim.
I don't really understand the desire to have more blogging platforms, there is already like 15 billion.<p>However I do prefer this style to Medium/ what ever that s one is.
Great idea and execution. You're filling a need that many people have and nailed the design. Naturally, this thread is full of legitimate suggestions for improvement, but you've got an excellent first iteration.<p>I'm not quite the type of person who needs your site, but I'm close enough to recognize its value. Keep it up and pay no mind to the "Why not X instead?" people. This is unique and worthwhile.
So a price has been placed on an almost exact copy of Medium without the benefits of Medium (an existing readership, existing capital), it's a copy right down to the typeface and even the green coloured buttons. How does one have complete control over their brand with Silvrback? There's no ability to customise the design beyond what already exists. There's nothing marketable about this product yet.
hosted is good but i require the option to easily host it myself (like github pages).<p>My content is my life and I want it to be around in 40 years. Even if facebook bans my account for a TOS violation where they changed the terms out from under me. Even if google hands my account to law enforcement because another country's government doesn't agree with my free speech.<p>I need to own my content.
Do you have a "data liberation" type policy? Eg, if someone wanted all their content, how do they get it out?<p>I've gotten burned by that before with Blogger and Posterous, and now use Octopress for this reason. Open to better alternatives, but need a clear and easy way to get my content back out if I ever decide to change services.
I've signed up, I'm hopeful it will spur me to write and worry less about how it looks.<p>Have you given any thought to being able to import existing posts that are in markdown format? I'm currently using scriptogr.am and have a number of posts that ideally I'd like to import.
I made Mardown-Powered SkyDrive-Hosted blogging platform a few weeks back.<p>All you had to do is claim a username/url (by navigating to it), login with SkyDrive and start adding markdown files to the "StratosPress" (name of the service) directory in SkyDrive. No need to manually sync/push/publish. Just save and as soon as the file gets synced, your blog post is updated.<p>Unfortunately, nobody seems to use SkyDrive. And even if they did, who would give a random guy on the internet access to all of their SkyDrive files. I know I wouldn't. Too bad there's no way to restrict file access to third-party services.<p>Silvrback looks alright, but it still seems a bit too bloated to my taste. I'm not sure why exactly.
This looks great! Do you plan to support comments? I know it's a difficult thing to do so I'm not expecting that, just curious. I also know about Disqus, but that is no good for a technical blog since they took away the ability to post code samples a year or two ago.
On a related note, I found an app called Haroopad which is a cross-platform offline Markdown editor[1]. It even supports some GitHub flavored Markdown.<p>[1] - <a href="http://pad.haroopress.com/" rel="nofollow">http://pad.haroopress.com/</a>
Could you provide more details? How many servers, where is the data stored, what type of support will you offer, is it an LLC, how many people behind it, company roadmap, application roadmap, what happens with it if you die tomorrow, etc?<p>Thanks!
Looks like nice execution and everything, but guys, I have to ask, is Wordpress really that hard to set up? Copying Medium's theme shouldn't be THAT much work...
I don't really understand the existence of these blog services aimed at developers when so many thousands of static site generators and rsync exist.
Do you think WordPress has outlived its utility as a personal blogging platform? I am planning to move my blog from WordPress to something more simpler.
cool - thanks. i almost wrote the same thing, alas... i had other priorities.<p>will defintely check it out, but if i dont like it... you might have some competition
How do I leave a comment on his blog? WTF is up with people disabling commenting... if you don't want any feedback then I don't care to hear what you got to say.