7 ms·
Vapid: an intentionally simple CMS
- mankash666 8y agoA few demo pages would help visualize the end result, before signing up.
- foxfired 8y agoGreat tool. Quick feedback: The div with class `.banner` is covering the login button so it can't be clicked. This on Chrome 68 Desktop.
- saagarjha 8y agoUnrelated, but “Vapid” is an interesting naming choice. The word has a clearly negative connotation, no?
- mankash666 8y agoDepends - it's defined as "offering nothing challenging". Creating content for others to read online has become as essential as being able to write with pen on paper. So in a sense, a CMS that isn't challenging for the average Joe is indeed better off being 'vapid'
- saagarjha 8y agoUh, I guess. Usually I equate it with “dull”.
- justtopost 8y agoVapid, to me, is like an agressive ignorance or boredom. Someone uninteresting and yet proud of their 'basic-ness'. Someone concerned with the valueless superficial representation over the real article.
- SyneRyder 8y agoThe Oxford definition is a bit more specific: "offering nothing that is stimulating or challenging; bland". It doesn't really mean effortless or intuitive, more like the simple in simpleton. (The origin is apparently from vapour and was used to describe stale wine. [1]) [1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/vapid https://www.etymonline.com/word/vapid
- themodelplumber 8y agoWell, when I read the name "Vapid" and then "for people who create websites for other people" it really did bring to mind certain projects from the past. The kind of projects where you don't want the bulk of an enterprise-ready CMS getting in the way of a fast exit :-)
- whoisjuan 8y agoBut in a physical context, vapid can be also mean "shallow" or "flat" which kind of matches the idea of a flat CMS, I guess.
- saagarjha 8y agoI guess this name had more depth than I realized :)
- ObsoleteNerd 8y agoIt's a memorable 5 digit .com with no purposeful typos or other trickery, and it also gets people talking (like this thread right now). I think it's perfect.
- petercooper 8y agoYeah, though "Wii" sounds like urination, "iPad" sounds like a sanitary product, not even to mention "Virgin".. and, well, no one cares about those anymore :-)
- kennydude 8y agoWebsite says it was deployed live by Cards Against Humanity. I doubt they really care
- topoftheforts 8y agoPeople at Slack had the same doubts before they chose that name[1], but clearly it was a non-issue [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/07/27/633164558/slack-flickr-stewart-butterfield https://www.npr.org/2018/07/27/633164558/slack-flickr-stewar...
- Untit1ed 8y ago> If you're interested in kicking the tires and are comfortable with dev environments, then install the app via these terminal commands. So is this actually an open-source project, or is the open source just intended as a preview, and it's expected that production workloads would always be in the SaaS version? It looks great but I'm a bit confused by the intention.
- fbnlsr 8y agoSame here. The fact that you can request for a closed beta access suggest that it's not something you could host yourself, but at the end of the page it shows how to test it yourself. Pretty confusing. Edit: It says on the medium post: "This is a great way to get familiar with the app, and prep your site(s) for deploying on the Vapid hosted service." So yeah looks like it's going to be a SaSS.
- throwaway427 8y agoThe code is licensed MIT without restrictions and the readme says: "Vapid can be deployed to any hosting service that supports Node.js."
- fastball 8y agoI like the look of it! The basic idea has been executed already using PHP by Perch CMS[0], but this looks like it could be a good alternative (esp. if it's open source!) 0: https://grabaperch.com/ https://grabaperch.com/
- egeozcan 8y agoI'm a big fan of Processwire (open source), and I also love that you need to define fields explicitly. Doesn't turn into a circus of what's defined where, when it gets a little bit complicated? I never tried this model so I'm really asking.
- fastball 8y agoI don't know about Vapid, but with perch it automatically does some categorization for you. Obviously each page on your site has it's own page in the CMS for setting variables. You can also subgroup pages into sections, still just using simple templating functions. And then there is also a dedicated page for managing your various images/resources. The main use case I think is for people who build landing pages for other people. A static site generator is good if you're building a landing page for yourself, but if you're building a website for the butcher shop down the road, they're not gonna want to edit individual markdown files. So you throw in some Perch (or Vapid) variables and it does the rest for you. Then you can just give the shop owner a login and they can edit the site as they see fit. The appeal is to have the ease of a static site generator (you don't have to develop your HTML with any sort of "CMS" in mind) while actually having that CMS functionality. I'm excited about multiple products in this space, because it means I can probably switch between them in a matter of minutes/hours, realistically.
- andy_ppp 8y agoWas going to come here to say https://grabaperch.com https://grabaperch.com is similar and fantastic - Drew Mclellan and Rachel Andrew are so incredibly helpful in the forums and it's so easy to deploy it's my go-to for knocking out a site quickly for a friend.
- atacrawl 8y ago
- thrower123 8y agoWhat a beautiful name for a CMS
- chrismorgan 8y agoI’m impressed with the illustration: it does a very good job of conveying just what the product is. It is, admittedly, much simpler than most products, but it’s quite an achievement all the same. I imagine that it’s a slight simplification, but perhaps only very slight. It looks to have a couple of errors, though: the intro field in it doesn’t look right: the default editor type is wysiwyg, so I presume there should be a toolbar there in practice; and it has required=false, so I presume the red star should be missing.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y agoThis is great. I've been wanting something like this for a while now. I really like the website too. Minus the small bugs people have already mentioned, the actual design and information on the front page is perfect. A lot of projects shared on HN could learn from this page, tbh (I mean that in an encouraging way, not an attack, but so many project homepages don't explain the project very well).
- pettou 8y agoWhat are the differences between Vapid and Grav?
- corwin7 8y agoGrav is in use on many production sites and their support is amazing. When I run into an issue they resolve it like I'm on a paid contract. I have a shared environment with one grav install and a dozen sites which is not a normal install. Here's a really simple blog: https://www.sendthemtomir.com/ https://www.sendthemtomir.com/
- duncd 8y agoI was looking for something like this the other day. I'm definitely trying it out this weekend!
- vinayms 8y agoIs the name actually "rapid" but as said by Barry Kripke? But a more serious question is, how is this different from the hundreds of other CMS? I am not attacking, but just trying to understand what motivated this and why someone might choose this. As someone who would need a CMS in the near future I am interested in this genuinely. Don't say RTFM because I did, but I didn't find anything like "why use vapid?". Is this point in the gist supposed to be the clincher? > You only need to know HTML (plus CSS and JS to the extent that your design calls for it).
- TotempaaltJ 8y agoIt seems to be meant for people who build a lot of customizable, relatively simple websites. The devs write the HTML & CSS, and Vapid automatically generates admin dashboards for content management.
- mimi89999 8y agoHow is that different from what Django does?
- stdbrouw 8y agoDjango's admin is great, but it's semi-automatic at best: you still have to specify exactly what the models should look like. This tool seems to infer the models and forms that are required from the html.
- rthomas6 8y agoI think Vapid is for static sites. Unlike Django, WordPress, etc, there's no backend. Correct me if I'm wrong.
- yurishimo 8y agoThere does appear to be a backend, it’s just only used to generate the static files that are eventually served.
- 8y ago
- lilactown 8y agoA few years ago I used a small startup called 900dpi to build a few client websites that needed to allow the clients to modify certain parts of the website on the fly. This seems similar-ish, but with a self-hosted option - which I prefer after my experience when 900dpi shuttered ;) Seems useful!
- imleft 8y agoSimpler https://www.staticgen.com/metabakeorg https://www.staticgen.com/metabakeorg
- unicornporn 8y agohttps://getkirby.com/ https://getkirby.com/ is nice, but not open-source. https://getgrav.org/ https://getgrav.org/ seems similar. https://bolt.cm/ https://bolt.cm/ is perhaps not as sparse, but the best flat file CMS I've found (SQLite).
- fbnlsr 8y agoKirby is really good. I've tried it a few weeks ago for a simple website (for which I would have used Wordpress) and it did the job perfectly. It's fast, efficient, has a great documentation and is really easy to set up. I have nothing bad to say about this.
- aargh_aargh 8y agoI can recommend Bolt CMS for its declarative definition of content types and overall simplicity. (It's not limited to SQLite, though.)
- dstick 8y agoNice, was actually checking out Jekyll the other day but this looks 10x better for the purpose of getting a simple blog up and running without all the WP bloat. Will give it a try next week!
- fbnlsr 8y agoI've quickly played with it just now and I can't see how you could use Vapid to create new blog posts. It seems to be a simple dashboard for existing content, but I couldn't figure out how to create new content.
- hunvreus 8y agoI've built Jekyll+ to handle editing GitHub pages, it may be worth a look; https://github.com/Wiredcraft/jekyllplus#readme https://github.com/Wiredcraft/jekyllplus#readme
- bensonn 8y agoVapid seems like what I am after, a super simple CMS for "brochure" sites. Using page templates might allow www.surrealcms.com to manage a blog. Builtin blogging is planned for version 7.1. Hugo + Netlify is the direction I am going now but that still seems overkill.
- sleepychu 8y agoNeat, haven't played with it but the execution looks great! Have been working on something similar for a specific niche of CMSs, do you handle primitive lists/lists of complex types? (E.g. to create nav bars that can be modified by the CMS)
- jedimastert 8y agoLittle nit-pick, but the code in the top image example says {{intro type=html required=false}} But there's still a red star next to intro
- floatingatoll 8y agoFixed!
- atrilumen 8y agoThis looks really great, thank you! I might play with it this morning, with Choo! https://github.com/choojs/choo https://github.com/choojs/choo
- mxuribe 8y agoSo, it is not a dashboard for managing a static site...rather, it is a dashboard for managing static content that gets ultimately served to visitors via node...is that right? (This is not a criticism, just confirming.)
- leejoramo 8y agoI was thinking Vapid is like http://getlektor.com http://getlektor.com and is a static renderer with a built-in admin UI. But you maybe correct that node.js is serving the files.
- mxuribe 8y agoI loved lektor when it first came on the scene...but can't recall why I stopped using it. The concept is great: admin UI that outputs static files! For some reason, i stopped using it, and the last couple of years have been using hugo...maybe i should revisit lektor. Thanks for this reminder!
- RobGav 8y agoI can recommend Publii CMS https://getpublii.com https://getpublii.com
- knieveltech 8y agoI took this for a test drive this morning. In addition to producing a raft of errors trying to install globally, I ran into a number of issues where the documentation didn't exactly jive with observed reality. I threw up my hands and wandered off when pasting example code from the documentation into a template caused the server to crash. General impression: fun idea, not ready for prime time.
- floatingatoll 8y agoTheir first blog post talking about vapid is at: https://medium.com/@hellovapid/hello-vapid-db3709ad5b82 https://medium.com/@hellovapid/hello-vapid-db3709ad5b82
- craftoman 8y ago"For people who build websites for other people". The headline is so freaking hilarious! Haha
- zhte415 8y agoI read >The HTML is the CMS Add simple template tags to a static webpage, and Vapid will automatically generate the dashboard for you. No config files, no other languages required While puzzling over the links (curved purple lines with end-points no arrows) over the image above. Then I guessed, HTML tabs can be added, and webform will update to reflect to the new tabs added. Right? This took a good couple of minutes of thinking what this does. I suggest adding a video or two on the landing page with a demo. A before/after. Perhaps I'm stupid on not getting this, but I guess a lot of people are far more stupid than me.
- VvR-Ox 8y agoReally nice concept! I like systems that keep your work focused & simple.