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Syte: Simple but powerful packaged personal site

200 points| saym | 13 years ago |github.com | reply

51 comments

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[+] bjourne|13 years ago|reply
But isn't it a big problem that all the blog posts are loaded using Javascript? It means your blog will be fully invisible to Googlebot and anyone coming from search engines. The purpose of a blog is, at least partially, to have readers but loading content via Javascript makes that harder to get.
[+] ANTSANTS|13 years ago|reply
I guess the days of "degrading gracefully when Javascript is disabled" are dead and gone.
[+] markild|13 years ago|reply
At the moment, it seems that you need to use Tumblr for blog posts, the author also mentions maybe extending it to Wordpress.

I think the entire idea here is that it is an aggregator of sorts. The site itself contains nothing that does not exist elsewhere, and judging from one of the open pull requests where someone has implemented local blog support, the author does not intend to store anything locally.

Though I like that he has open sourced this, I find it really weird that this is not offered as a service.

[+] tomasien|13 years ago|reply
If you ever build this into an easy setup UI, I think this would just be humongous. This combines what I like about about.me and what I find useful about tumblr. I've been trying to customize my tumblr for a while now to look almost exactly like this, but you did it FOR ME!

You're the man/woman

[+] bpatrianakos|13 years ago|reply
I started working on something that's basically Syte but as a service a while back. I like the idea of being able to "own" your content from other services in a way and to be able to use sites/services like Evernote, Dropbox, Twitter, etc. as a kind of personal blog/scrapbook/private journal. Now it's morphed into something slightly different but a lot of it is still there. I won't shamelessly promote here but you can see the link in my profile if you want. It's getting real close to being finished but I must be honest with myself and admit that things keep popping up that keep me from launching when I say I will so I'm done giving dates. But it will open. I just pushed a pretty important update to the staging server this morning actually.
[+] rigoneri|13 years ago|reply
Hey tomasien, I've thought about making this into a service but haven't had time working on my current startup. In the mean time there are some folks that are solving the same problem check them out http://flavors.me/
[+] saym|13 years ago|reply
Alas it is not I who wrote it, though I do have a fork I've been tinkering with.

Feel free to tweet at the author though, I'm sure he'd love to hear from you! https://twitter.com/rigoneri

[+] pajju|13 years ago|reply
Its a smart app design which is nothing but a content aggregator from your - Twitter account, GitHub, Dribbble, Instagram, Foursquare, your Tumblr blog, Last.fm, SoundCloud and Bitbucket. It requests for all these services via Javascript on the fly. Cool!

So it keeps no Database locally but only requires some computing + lots of Bandwidth in the host server.

Its super smart design as it fits super fine for the Heroku Free Tier. :)

[+] robinduckett|13 years ago|reply
This is Svbtle done right - Not closed and proprietary (apple) but open and free for extension (open source).
[+] emillon|13 years ago|reply
> There is only one rule. You can use, reproduce and do whatever you want with Syte but I would like you to choose a different adjacent color as the ones used by the people below.

So... Does it qualify as free software?

Technically it's a limitation of what can be done with it, and it limits the total number of users.

[+] Karunamon|13 years ago|reply
The way it's worded makes it seem like a request rather than a condition of use.

You may do whatever but I would like...

[+] Evbn|13 years ago|reply
Different color from, they mean?

Creator: add a bit to default to a randomly chosen color, or even blacklist your special colors, to reduce duplication by the laziest.

[+] alexbowe|13 years ago|reply
It's cool :) and I just want to say that the readme is awesome. I love developers who communicate :P
[+] mertemin|13 years ago|reply
I really liked the design, but didn't want to do all the integrations etc. I created a similar HTML design for the ones who may want to use it immediately. In addition, I created an tumblr theme and submitted it to tumblr. For details, https://github.com/mertemin/purus
[+] zzleeper|13 years ago|reply
" I would like you to choose a different adjacent color as the ones used by the people below"

Any clue about why this?

[+] selectout|13 years ago|reply
He's going for a similar style as Svbtle(.com) where each person that blogs has their own identity that corresponds to a color/image so they can easily be cataloged and seen.
[+] kayoone|13 years ago|reply
with enough people taking part he could use every profile color as a pixel and create pictures where each pixel links to a profile...thats just my idea though
[+] ypeterholmes|13 years ago|reply
The aesthetics are nice but from a usability standpoint having the navigation as a mix of external links and syte navigation seems like a poor choice.

*edit. I see now that it's just twitter and the contact that leave. Not bad.

[+] Eventh|13 years ago|reply
Twitter and the other services are only external links if they are wrongly configured, API calls fails, or JavaScript has not finished loading/is not available. Contacts is just 'mailto:'.
[+] timdl|13 years ago|reply
Good job, and OK, it looks good, but:

a. it's on tumblr so SEO will be crap or non existent, b. it loads using JS (as bjourne pointed out), so posts will be invisible to Search Engines.

You should try, somehow, to integrate it with wordpress.

[+] randomchars|13 years ago|reply
What's wrong with tumblr's SEO?
[+] navs|13 years ago|reply
Ok so this is like a lifestream? I remember lifestreams being huge a few years back when twitter just started to really kick off. When I say huge, I do mean in my little circles.
[+] downey|13 years ago|reply
Looks very compelling. I'm tempted to try this out... only thing is that I don't want my site to look too cookie-cutter if Syte catches on. :-)
[+] brianlovin|13 years ago|reply
I remember this popping up here a few months ago. Definitely looking forward to WordPress integration, but this looks amazing so far.
[+] kayoone|13 years ago|reply
very awesome! make this easy to use for the mainstream and you have a winner!
[+] obilgic|13 years ago|reply
this should be saas
[+] SwaroopH|13 years ago|reply
I have something in the works. Will try to post on HN in a few days.
[+] chuppo|13 years ago|reply
"My" personal site? Or facebooks,twitters,foursquare extended profile of me?

Who would want their personal site to be connected to so many other sites, all whom are more powerful and make more money on your site than you?

[+] ed209|13 years ago|reply
I post my stuff all over the web, I don't want to repost all that to my own personal site. Posting to all the other big players is great for discovery, grabbing all that content to post to my own site is great for email footers, business cards etc I built http://qiip.me exactly for this, see mine at http://qiip.me/edlea
[+] fiveliterstang|13 years ago|reply
I don't really understand the implementation here, is this a "baked" system or does it require python hosting/node.js and the like on your web server?

Also why do we need to sign up for developer keys at all these services? Kinda crazy