Fun Links 2015-12-18
Continuing with my trend of grouping links by theme, I’m going to list a few Dropbox based blogging/web hosting solutions. It is an appealing proposition, particularly for people who are non-technical to be able to update files on your computer and then have them magically published for you.
I’m listing services with free options, but I’ll give honourable mention to a couple of others which may not. In general, some of these tools feel a bit simplified, but that makes sense since they are trying to be as easy to use as possible.
And in case you were wondering, these apps don’t get full access to your Dropbox content, only the app-specific folder that they set up as part of the linking process.
DropPages
http://droppages.com/
DropPages allows you to edit text files with the (Markdown-based) content of your pages and takes care of adding the templates/themes around it. Everything gets compressed and minified as part of their processing, and you can host off of a subdomain of droppages.com for free. If you want a custom domain name, it costs £5/month for premium service.
Pancake
https://pancake.io/
Pancake also supports Markdown-based pages in a Dropbox folder, but also allows you to use HTML files as well. It also gives you more control over your templates. It supports adding metadata to your Markdown files. You can even edit your content files from the Pancake website if you aren’t able to access your Dropbox. It looks like Pancake is starting to get into hosting sites from Git repositories, passing things through a static site generator. You can also use a custom domain name for free. Otherwise, your site will be hosted on a subdomain of pancakeapps.com. In fact, I believe that the entirety of Pancake’s services is free.
Postach.io
http://postach.io/
OK, I’ll admit, this isn’t Dropbox-based, it is Evernote-based, but the offering and site are so compelling that I thought it would be worth mentioning. I’m not much of an Evernote person, but some people swear by it, well for them, this might be the best way to blog. Custom domains are available for free (to integrate, you still need to buy the domain), and creating a post is as easy as creating a new note in Evernote. It does seem more blog oriented versus general site oriented. There is a premium level you can pay for which offers multiple authors, password protection and the ability to have multiple sites per account.
Here are a couple of “honourable mention” links because I short changed you on Dropbox services. They don’t seem to have free options but are otherwise similar to the previous Dropbox services.
- Site44 - http://www.site44.com - starts at $4.95/month
- Blot.im - https://blot.im - $20/year