Congrats on the launch! It takes courage to build something and share it publicly.
Some feedback:
1. Let me build a blog post and let me see what it would look like before asking me to sign up.
2. Landing page is very technical. Most bloggers won't understand it.
3. From the landing page, it is unclear how your platform differs from your competitors.
4. You mention accessibility but your gif moves at the speed of a Tik Tok video. I personally find it jarring (maybe I'm old). Users with motion sensitivity will feel worse.
Thank you so much. This is my first time sharing my product on Hacker News, and every bit of attention like this makes me really happy.
1. You're right. I actually considered it, but I thought a demo would make the landing page quite heavy. Your comment gave me the idea of making a separate page where you can try a demo. Great suggestion, thank you.
2. Thanks. This was actually intentional. As a first target, I'd like Bloffy to appeal to developers who care a lot about SEO. Bloffy is also a bit different from typical blog products built to be easy for everyone. The goal is for it to grow, over time, into a blog customized to you. The first target is developers, but going further, SEO professionals who can handle HTML, CSS, and basic JS could be a target too.
3. You're right. I'll make the differences clearer on the landing page, and I'm also planning to write a separate post about how Bloffy differs from other blogging platforms.
4. I think you mean the demo video on the landing page? The pace does feel a bit fast. I was trying to keep it under a minute. I'll take that into account. Thanks!
The email I got for the confirmation step was entirely in Korean, just fyi.
I shared bloffy with a few people I volunteer with, since we contribute to a side-by-side markdown/css editor with a live preview as well (though not for blogging).
I think you should make clear that the "Translation" option, to create additional pages for translations, doesn't actually do the translation for you. It just creates a subpage for a translation.
One annoying thing I'm finding is that iOS/MacOS autocorrects `bloffy` into `bloody` at every chance it gets.
The confirmation email being sent in Korean does look like a real bug. I had set English as the default, but it seems I missed this part. Thanks for pointing it out.
You're right that the word "Translation" can be misleading. For now, translations are meant to be done manually, but I'm also considering automatic translation in the future. Automatic translation can change the meaning you want to convey, so I'd still recommend translating posts yourself. But for convenience, I'm thinking about adding automatic translation.
There's currently a bug that breaks sign-up on every language version of the site except English. If you'd like to sign up now, please use the English sign-up page and keep the site in English until you're done:
https://bloffy.co/en/workspace/sign-up
Thanks! I'm a solo developer based in Korea. Since it's not a company, I'm not sure what I should put there. What do solo developers usually include on their About page?
Just a personal note to you: there are a couple of serious shadow banned ("dead") people commenting in this thread, so you might want to enable seeing them.
My native language is Korean, and by "your own blog" I meant something like "a blog that's truly yours." I was trying to sum up a few things in that one phrase: you can customize it freely, the platform interferes very little, it's friendly to raw HTML, and it allows JavaScript. I think that line could be misleading, so I'll need to reword it.
Congrats on the launch! It takes courage to build something and share it publicly.
Some feedback:
1. Let me build a blog post and let me see what it would look like before asking me to sign up.
2. Landing page is very technical. Most bloggers won't understand it.
3. From the landing page, it is unclear how your platform differs from your competitors.
4. You mention accessibility but your gif moves at the speed of a Tik Tok video. I personally find it jarring (maybe I'm old). Users with motion sensitivity will feel worse.
5. Sample page has leaked css. https://bloffy.bloffy.blog/en
Thank you so much. This is my first time sharing my product on Hacker News, and every bit of attention like this makes me really happy.
1. You're right. I actually considered it, but I thought a demo would make the landing page quite heavy. Your comment gave me the idea of making a separate page where you can try a demo. Great suggestion, thank you.
2. Thanks. This was actually intentional. As a first target, I'd like Bloffy to appeal to developers who care a lot about SEO. Bloffy is also a bit different from typical blog products built to be easy for everyone. The goal is for it to grow, over time, into a blog customized to you. The first target is developers, but going further, SEO professionals who can handle HTML, CSS, and basic JS could be a target too.
3. You're right. I'll make the differences clearer on the landing page, and I'm also planning to write a separate post about how Bloffy differs from other blogging platforms.
4. I think you mean the demo video on the landing page? The pace does feel a bit fast. I was trying to keep it under a minute. I'll take that into account. Thanks!
Oops, you're right. The CSS was showing up as-is in the summary of the first post on the list page. I've edited the post. Thanks!
The email I got for the confirmation step was entirely in Korean, just fyi.
I shared bloffy with a few people I volunteer with, since we contribute to a side-by-side markdown/css editor with a live preview as well (though not for blogging).
I think you should make clear that the "Translation" option, to create additional pages for translations, doesn't actually do the translation for you. It just creates a subpage for a translation.
One annoying thing I'm finding is that iOS/MacOS autocorrects `bloffy` into `bloody` at every chance it gets.
Thank you so much for the feedback.
The confirmation email being sent in Korean does look like a real bug. I had set English as the default, but it seems I missed this part. Thanks for pointing it out.
You're right that the word "Translation" can be misleading. For now, translations are meant to be done manually, but I'm also considering automatic translation in the future. Automatic translation can change the meaning you want to convey, so I'd still recommend translating posts yourself. But for convenience, I'm thinking about adding automatic translation.
Thanks again.
The confirmation email is no longer sent in Korean. It now comes in the language of the site you signed up from. Thanks for catching it!
There's currently a bug that breaks sign-up on every language version of the site except English. If you'd like to sign up now, please use the English sign-up page and keep the site in English until you're done: https://bloffy.co/en/workspace/sign-up
I'm fixing this right now.
Fixed.
Congrats on the launch! would you pls add a about us page let us know who are building this site.
Thanks! I'm a solo developer based in Korea. Since it's not a company, I'm not sure what I should put there. What do solo developers usually include on their About page?
The timing on this, given the PHP vulnerability news couldn't be better if you tried.
Haha, right? Bloffy doesn't use PHP at all.
Just a personal note to you: there are a couple of serious shadow banned ("dead") people commenting in this thread, so you might want to enable seeing them.
Oh, I see. I didn't know about the showdead setting. Thanks for letting me know!
Is this a hosted solution? Open source?
I can't tell from your website how you are solving this problem: "I think bloggers should have control over their own blog."
Yes, it's a hosted service.
My native language is Korean, and by "your own blog" I meant something like "a blog that's truly yours." I was trying to sum up a few things in that one phrase: you can customize it freely, the platform interferes very little, it's friendly to raw HTML, and it allows JavaScript. I think that line could be misleading, so I'll need to reword it.
Thank you.
The images take up a lot of mobile screen space with low information
I see. Fair point, thanks. I'll try to improve it on mobile.