Looking over the comments I want to say I am surprised the attitude of some people towards this project, but given this is Hacker "Hate On PHP" News, I am not. I am disappointed to see people nitpicking over the way some things have been coded. As someone who's used Dropplets on a couple of small sites now, I've found it to be a breath of fresh air compared to Wordpress.
Not only is Dropplets a lot more simple to work with compared to other CMS's/blogging platforms written in PHP, it works. It's easy to write themes for it, it's easy to publish content and easy to make it do whatever you want. It's perfect for those times when you want something lightweight that isn't bloated Wordpress.
So I am going to surprise you all by not weighing in on the dick-measuring contest that is language comparison. You can write bad code in any language, PHP just makes it easier to do so. I think this is a great project and if you have a problem with the way it's coded, remember it's open source and anyone can contribute.
This is the other problem with a lot of people that frequent this site, but not limited to this site. They're quick to complain and point out problems with other peoples code and their choice of language, but rarely ever put their keyboard where their mouth is and actually bother to make a difference by contributing to an open source project.
So my advice to anyone who came here to comment on the choice of PHP or the way it's coded would be to take it elsewhere and learn to compliment someone else's work. It's attitudes like the ones I am seeing that make people (like the author of this project) not want to release their work as open source because people are far too critical and judgemental of others.
Not everyone who's criticizing the code is necessarily hating on PHP. There is a difference between good PHP and bad PHP and perfectly valid reasons to suggest things need to be changed.
And I believe people have been contributing, at least, issues have been opened up and at least one commenter has mentioned rewriting (possibly forking) it.
There's good code being written in PHP, but as far as I can see, not really in this project. JS, HTML, PHP are all mixed together, global functions and variables everywhere, no classes or objects.
Also they are not using an existing PHP framework so they'll have to reinvent the wheel many times for proper session handling, caching, encryption, and for countless other problems that have already been solved.
The presentation is awesome. Super clean, I love the logo and the video's that let you know just what this thing is. The blurbs of text were enough to get me interested enough to watch the video. The videos were clean and to the point. Damn, for me this is what all landing pages for projects like this should be. I'm not sure if I'll use your product but I'll certainly bookmark the page to learn from later.
A small rant: I think it is bad practice to hide content below the page height. I just wanted to close the website because I thought 'nothing to see here' before I accidentally scrolled and more content was revealed.
I read this comment before actually going to the site, which is fortunate, because I'm certain I would've missed the rest of the content if you hadn't pointed that out.
I rarely complain about design issues on websites but this a case where things should really be changed.
Since there seems to be some discussion about the code quality for Dropplets, I just wanted to clarify that Dropplets is really just a proof of concept. I'm not a developer, nor do I want to be. I'm good at creating concepts like Dropplets, but that's where my skills as a developer ends. I decided to publish Dropplets with the hope that developers that actually knew what they were doing would help me take the concept to the next level. I stated this on Dropplets.com as well.
Certainly, learning to use Composer (http://getcomposer.org) to manage the packages such as PHPass and Markdown and autoload will clean up a lot of the mess, also updating packages is as easy as running a shell command (or even in my case a batch file..)
I'm a bit worried about the amount of mixedin html and php I see too -- one of the benefits of sticking with an existing templating system (though people will say that's superfluous since PHP is a templating system) is that data passed into templates can be automatically escaped, whereas just mixing in adds the possibility of an xss issue.
It also looks like he's using index.php pages as a way to protect his files possibly? I think he need to look into proper .htaccess protection and url routing - ensure that only predetermined urls can even resolve to anything.
Overall it looks interesting and there's definitely a place for it conceptually but as others have pointed out, the style of PHP is a bit behind what's considered best practice. Still, that can be easily fixed.
Side note: I love how this has been in development since at least February (when the Twitter was launched). Too many half-baked projects get posted to HN the weekend they're launched and then never end up progressing much further. The fact that this has been in the works for a while gives me the confidence to try it, knowing this isn't as fly-by-night as a Show HN weekend project.
The concept and simplicity make me think of Ghost's (http://ghost.org/features/): free, open source, near-minimalist, and self-hosted.
The seemingly only advantage is that Dropplets doesn't require a database, and its landing page is amazingly beautiful, clear, and to the point (though Ghost's "features" page is slick as well).
On a more technical note, click events seem to be propagated up the player on the landing page, closing it when toggling HD for example.
But Ghost uses node.js which almost nobody can actually host themselves, because the hosting that people already pay for doesn't (and perhaps wont) support it. Node may be hip and all, but PHP still seems like the right choice for something as simple as blogging software to me.
The video was down for me, but maybe the uploader makes it easier then some other systems? When I try to teach non tech people to use a db-less CMS with no online admin, they get Markdown (they can at least copy and paste my example pages). But uploading files, WinSCP, FileZilla, etc and opening its NOT in word... this blows their minds. So if anyone has seen the uploader and it makes it super simple, it might be worth checking out.
This looks awesome. Kudos to the author for doing this. Not a big fan of PHP, but I love everything else about this project - from a product perspective.
Not getting into the code.
I tried playing with the demo and the 'admin panel' (by pressing the dropplet icon in top left) didn't show up for me in Chrome on Windows 7.
The screen moved slightly to the right (say 2 px) so I knew it was supposed to move...but it didn't go the full way.
This looks promising. I'm gonna give this a try since I'm looking for a simple and lightweight CMS for my blog. Speaking of which, anyone have any recommendations about that (apart from Jekyll)? I still haven't found what I'm looking for and I'm on the verge of coding my own blog in plain HTML instead of just installing something like Wordpress but that may be a pain in the ass to manage once I have more than handful of posts on my host.
I started playing with Anchor last week. I like it thus far, because it really focuses on blogging, something WordPress kinda deemphasized two years ago.
Plus, it's pretty. Which is always a nice bonus.
----
If you're not averse to paying for something, Statamic looks really awesome.
Having tried it out before, I found the format used for blog posts to be incredibly arbitrary. It requires your twitter username for every post, and a bunch of other things. Plus, instead of using key/value pairings with yaml or something similar, it required that your headers be in a specific order.
It seems cool, it also seems like a little bit of work could be put into making it more accessible to people who didn't write it.
I tried to set this up a few months ago. Apparently I was formatting post headers incorrectly, because I couldn't get any posts I wrote to show up on the site after upload. No error messages or anything.
It's pretty, but the workflow isn't much better than Jekyll. I would have been happy if there was a post editor in the admin panel, but that's apparently not going to happen.
looks great! definitely will have to try this out.
it's a little discouraging, however, that the issue queue has so many pull requests, comments, etc. without comment.
i love the concept of simplicity and i'm sure the maintainers have a roadmap in mind. it'd be nice if that was communicated a bit so i can know how simple they plan to keep it.
[+] [-] DigitalSea|12 years ago|reply
Not only is Dropplets a lot more simple to work with compared to other CMS's/blogging platforms written in PHP, it works. It's easy to write themes for it, it's easy to publish content and easy to make it do whatever you want. It's perfect for those times when you want something lightweight that isn't bloated Wordpress.
So I am going to surprise you all by not weighing in on the dick-measuring contest that is language comparison. You can write bad code in any language, PHP just makes it easier to do so. I think this is a great project and if you have a problem with the way it's coded, remember it's open source and anyone can contribute.
This is the other problem with a lot of people that frequent this site, but not limited to this site. They're quick to complain and point out problems with other peoples code and their choice of language, but rarely ever put their keyboard where their mouth is and actually bother to make a difference by contributing to an open source project.
So my advice to anyone who came here to comment on the choice of PHP or the way it's coded would be to take it elsewhere and learn to compliment someone else's work. It's attitudes like the ones I am seeing that make people (like the author of this project) not want to release their work as open source because people are far too critical and judgemental of others.
[+] [-] krapp|12 years ago|reply
And I believe people have been contributing, at least, issues have been opened up and at least one commenter has mentioned rewriting (possibly forking) it.
[+] [-] laurent123456|12 years ago|reply
Also they are not using an existing PHP framework so they'll have to reinvent the wheel many times for proper session handling, caching, encryption, and for countless other problems that have already been solved.
[+] [-] xauronx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohwp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkuntz2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidlumley|12 years ago|reply
It doesn't really matter if there's content below the page height, just that you ensure users see they have the affordance to scroll.
[+] [-] swift|12 years ago|reply
I rarely complain about design issues on websites but this a case where things should really be changed.
[+] [-] robbfitzsimmons|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phaer|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alwaysunday|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonsc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d0ugal|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krapp|12 years ago|reply
I'm a bit worried about the amount of mixedin html and php I see too -- one of the benefits of sticking with an existing templating system (though people will say that's superfluous since PHP is a templating system) is that data passed into templates can be automatically escaped, whereas just mixing in adds the possibility of an xss issue.
It also looks like he's using index.php pages as a way to protect his files possibly? I think he need to look into proper .htaccess protection and url routing - ensure that only predetermined urls can even resolve to anything.
Overall it looks interesting and there's definitely a place for it conceptually but as others have pointed out, the style of PHP is a bit behind what's considered best practice. Still, that can be easily fixed.
[+] [-] corywatilo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reidrac|12 years ago|reply
EDIT: the installation part in the README.md needs some extra info. Like it requires PHP and some file/directory permissions.
[+] [-] sterlingross|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pioul|12 years ago|reply
The seemingly only advantage is that Dropplets doesn't require a database, and its landing page is amazingly beautiful, clear, and to the point (though Ghost's "features" page is slick as well).
On a more technical note, click events seem to be propagated up the player on the landing page, closing it when toggling HD for example.
[+] [-] dkuntz2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unicornporn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xux|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trevordixon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dubcanada|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jh3|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egsec|12 years ago|reply
The video was down for me, but maybe the uploader makes it easier then some other systems? When I try to teach non tech people to use a db-less CMS with no online admin, they get Markdown (they can at least copy and paste my example pages). But uploading files, WinSCP, FileZilla, etc and opening its NOT in word... this blows their minds. So if anyone has seen the uploader and it makes it super simple, it might be worth checking out.
[+] [-] marcamillion|12 years ago|reply
Not getting into the code.
I tried playing with the demo and the 'admin panel' (by pressing the dropplet icon in top left) didn't show up for me in Chrome on Windows 7.
The screen moved slightly to the right (say 2 px) so I knew it was supposed to move...but it didn't go the full way.
Not sure why that is.
Edit: It looks like some sort of JS error:
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'create' of undefined measureIt.js:120 (anonymous function) measureIt.js:120
[+] [-] dombili|12 years ago|reply
But who knows, maybe Dropplets is the one.
[+] [-] phaer|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkuntz2|12 years ago|reply
Plus, it's pretty. Which is always a nice bonus.
----
If you're not averse to paying for something, Statamic looks really awesome.
[+] [-] dkuntz2|12 years ago|reply
It seems cool, it also seems like a little bit of work could be put into making it more accessible to people who didn't write it.
[+] [-] jamesgeck0|12 years ago|reply
It's pretty, but the workflow isn't much better than Jekyll. I would have been happy if there was a post editor in the admin panel, but that's apparently not going to happen.
[+] [-] andyhmltn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jc4p|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fmitchell0|12 years ago|reply
it's a little discouraging, however, that the issue queue has so many pull requests, comments, etc. without comment.
i love the concept of simplicity and i'm sure the maintainers have a roadmap in mind. it'd be nice if that was communicated a bit so i can know how simple they plan to keep it.