Hello. I built a blogging platform on my own over two years.
I like running my blog, but I couldn't find a blogging platform I really liked.
First. I thought a blog had to be really lightweight. Fortunately, after a lot of effort, I was able to achieve satisfactory results. (99 to 100 score)
Here is a sample blog: https://bloffy.bloffy.blog/en
You can check it with PageSpeed Insights: https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis?url=https://bloffy.bloffy...
SEO score of the sample blog is low because I blocked it from search engine indexing (noindex).
Second. I think bloggers should have control over their own blog. The blogging platforms I used had several problems.
Unnecessary JavaScript chunks. Ads that the platform inserted into my blog, not my own ads. Cannot manage multiple blogs. An editor that makes it hard to write semantic markup. Limited customization options. I was dissatisfied with the difficulty of placing my own ads.
And to solve this, I spent quite a long time researching and developing it on my own, and finally created it. I'm glad to share this launch with HN. I would appreciate any criticism, feedback, and interest.
Someone asked how it holds up with a long post and large images, so I made a sample: https://bloffy.bloffy.blog/en/a-heavy-post-long-text-and-lar...
And here's the PageSpeed Insights result: https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis/https-bloffy-bloffy-blog-...
It's a long post with lots of images in different sizes, plus diagrams and math.
Images uploaded in the editor get a srcset with 4 widths, and the CDN compresses them to suit each browser. Since we know each image's original width and height, the layout doesn't shift.
Diagrams and math are rendered to SVG and MathML when you publish, so readers can load them quite fast.
I actually wanted to talk about this too, so I'm glad I got the chance to answer. Thanks.
(The SEO score there is low only because the sample blog is noindexed.)
nice work man in bringing a raw page to 99 pagespeed. As you are letting bloggers pace their own ads, this will kill your scores. Today my own website cmoowls.com hit an LCP of 5.8s with a score of 70. But the LCP element was just a line of text, not an image.
The proble, was the element render delay. The first frame actually arrived after the load even, so our analytics already had started loading. Lighthouse counted this in the LCP and it was bad. Then. I fixed this by loading analytics after first paint instead of on loading. And then the next three runs gave me 99, 99, and a 100 (LCP 1.8, 1.8, 1.7).
But one small point here: CWV usually comes from Chrome's 28 days of visitors. 99 is just a lab score.
Thanks, you're right. It's just lab data for now. I'll check it again once we get real visitors.
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!
gg, not bad.
> but I thought a demo would make the landing page quite heavy
Just pack a slick, slim demo into it's own section right under the themes, which I'd put above the "Write freely in the editor." section.
And have a ToC of your landing page visibly present ... I scrolled once and was annoyed by the speed of the vid and how useless the "Write freely ..." section felt in the context built by the landing page thus far ...
> I was trying to keep it under a minute
...
Keep the vid slightly under 90 seconds and don't lead with that flow diagram... A good Anime intro or movie trailer you see once and sign up for the run.
I almost tried it but because it said __sign up__ I didn't.
I had a bit of a weird time getting what Bloffy's thing was ...
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.
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!
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?
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.
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