Introducing %blog

~dachus-tiprel-2.12.23

This is being served from %blog, the most versatile blogging app on Urbit. Anyone with an Urbit can start a blog, post to Web1, and share their posts as a URL. Most importantly, even people without an Urbit can read your blog.

%motivation

I've been blogging internally at Uqbar here, and thinking of ways to improve the UX and transfer the experience over to Urbit. Often, all we are trying to do is share some markdown: either you make a gist or post it to pastebin or maybe notion or something else. The fact that there is no good solution to markdown editing within Urbit is insane - especially when it is so easy to integrate with.

All of this has made me believe for a long time that a good blogging app on Urbit was very close, but it wasn't until Friday that I decided I would write it. At the same time, I decided to test the theory that "anyone can write an Urbit app in a weekend". Safe to say that I succeeded, and anyone can download %blog from ~hanrut-sillet-dachus-tiprel. While there are other ways of sharing markdown over Urbit, I think I succeeded in a few ways:

Compared to other Urbit blogging apps, %blog is

• much more customizable in terms of
  • adding new themes (just put arbitrary CSS in the markdown)
  • binding to a URL (literally anything goes unless it's / /apps* or /~*)
• lives in one unified interface, as opposed to several separate apps
• has a realtime preview while you are writing
• it is an extremely small codebase (just 100 lines of hoon + ~200 js)
• posts can be viewed by anyone (no planet required) by default

%feature - Where to Go From Here

I think the main thing to fix would be to make %blog styling mobile friendly and pretty by default. The default markdown rendering is quite ugly, and it takes some effort to improve it. I'd also like some way to post comments, and probably an email integration. Once these are in place, %blog will be a full blown substack replacement. I don't think it is that far away - probably one weekend for each of those features if I can find the time.

I'm excited for the future of %blog - for feature requests and ideas, DM me on Urbit at ~dachus-tiprel.

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