Show HN: MyJekyllBlog - an open source CMS and web host for Jekyll blogs

Show HN: MyJekyllBlog - an open source CMS and web host for Jekyll blogs(github.com)

66 points by symkat 3 years ago | 7 comments

symkat 3 years ago |

Hi Hacker News,

I want to show you something I’ve been working on: MyJekyllBlog.

It’s a multi-user CMS and hosting platform for Jekyll blogs. There is a web application that users can register on, and from that web app they can create Jekyll blogs, manage posts and media. When they make those updates, their blog is rebuilt with the Jekyll and the site is deployed to web servers.

The installation process is codified into the included ansible/ directory and instructions are included in the README for installation. So far I’ve been the only one working on it or installing it, so there is bound to be bugs and things I’ve missed, please feel free to open issues against the repository if you run into anything.

It supports three different user registration modes: open where anyone can sign up for an account, invite where anyone with an invite code can sign up for an account, and stripe where users must use a credit card to subscribe immediately after signing up for an account before they can access the site. You can enable more than one registration mode.

The entire system is open source and MIT licensed, including the installation process, devops tools, and billing code.

Thank you for taking a look!

rukshn 3 years ago | |

Interesting idea, however the problem that I see is why pay for jekyll blog hosting when you can host it on GitHub pages or serve via an S3 bucket for free?

Also the people who are using Jekyll are mostly developers or have knowledge in setting up and generating the static files, so majority of the users are comfortable in hosting it on GitHub.

But it's an interesting idea, I wish you all the best.

symkat 3 years ago | | |

Those are good points, thank you for the feedback and well-wishes!

indigodaddy 3 years ago |

The instructions call for 6 servers/roles. Seems like rather a lot for something like this. This looks cool though. Not sure why you wouldn’t be able to use a single host with LXD containers though in lieu of the multiple servers.

greggarious 3 years ago |

I kept wanting to set one up and struggling with syntax errors, thanks for posting this.

(If anyone knows a good guide to "rolling your own", I may give it one more go in that gap between Christmas and New Year's)

I really like Jeckyll since it's static and low bandwidth, so I can worry less about DDOSing and can stand up a dot onion to avoid censorship.

(Or so I'm told... I've not run many servers in my day, more of a troll who learned python, nmap, and metasploit after realizing civil society is anything but.)

emj 3 years ago |

This was a nicely executed KISS project seems like you have had fun. I've built lackluster versions of this in an ad-hoc manner and this is so much better! Minor nit-pick, seems to use lots of IPs/servers/money for what it does, I would also remove the binary from the initial commit.

A joy to read this code, will try to remove my crud and replace it with this.

symkat 3 years ago | |

Thanks, I’m really glad you like it! It’s been a lot of fun to work on.

It does use a few different IPs/servers, and I think some could be combined. If you do end up moving towards replacing yours with this, I’ve got an article written with more information on setting it up for doing development: https://tech.myjekyllblog.com/2022/12/14/setting-up-a-develo...

Thanks again, I appreciate your feedback!