Silvrback performs well under stress. It's setup to autoscale when a traffic surge is detected so the platform can easily handle articles making the front page of HN. Unicorn and memcached also really help.
I had the same strategy as this but I realized one important thing: I was spending all of my time looking at the damn charts.
The opportunity cost of being constantly distracted and worried about your investment might be higher than the profits you're realizing. Especially if you are a developer and command decent hourly rates.
It's also not enjoyable to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, worrying about what the current price is.
Loved the post. I'm in the exact same position as you. Have 6 months of runway and I've become an independent consultant. I'm also spending the time on my own ideas, like my newly launched https://www.silvrback.com
I wish you the best of luck. Like you said, life is too short not to take risks.
Just not possible in the sense that a hosted solution has the expectation that everything is managed for you. An open-source solution requires you to do the work of setting it up, configuring, handling traffic spikes, backups, etc...
Yeah, you're right. There's always going to be a group of people that want to configure everything themselves and setup their own servers. I'm not really targeting this group with silvrback. Open source ghost would be the best route for you.
However, there are a number of people looking for hosted solutions so they don't have to waste any time with config issues. This is where Silvrback comes in. Also, Silvrback should really only be compared to the hosted version of Ghost (which isn't out yet). Comparing it to open source isn't really possible.
If you're choosing between Ghost and Medium, and would like something that is hosted, I recently released Silvrback (https://www.silvrback.com). It has the simplicity of Medium, while giving you control over your own brand.
I might be biased, but I think your new blog on silvrback looks way better than your old one. The presentation of your code is much more enjoyable to read, as well. Just my 2 cents.
You actually can do this: "I think it would be really cool if you could use the header from the bio page, for the rest of the site as well - then I think it would be less anonymous, e.g.:"
In "Settings," there is a field called "short bio sentence." This bio sentence will show up next to your name on every post.
I'm still playing around with different home page variations. I will consider your request (or give people more options for their homepage). I'll let you know.
Hey oellagaard. When you say, "I was also hoping for the possibility to write a synopsis for each blog article", where would you want that synopsis to show up? In the archive? Just curious about this idea. (I'm taking feature requests). Sorry if you find it to be too minimal and don't like the menu. I guess everyone has different tastes. I like your idea about storing the docs in dropbox.
I'm getting a lot of feature requests. So I have to pick and choose. You have some good questions.
The tags are there to give the reader extra meaning about the article. For example, you could tell someone to read an article first in the tag. However, I believe I will offer a way to filter by tags soon. This wasn't their primary purpose, though. They aren't like stack overflow tags. They are more like post-it-notes to guide your readers.
If you don't want to use the auto-generated friendly slug that Silvrback makes for your article, then you would have to edit it to your liking in "advanced post settings." I don't want this to be bloated with features so I don't have a 'slug template' save option. 98% of my users wouldn't need this option. Sorry :)
With thousands of posts the page will be paginated. I'm actually still implementing this. Should be ready soon.
If you do buy a subscription and don't like it, just email me and I will refund you.
I was debating this as well. I'm not sure which method is the best, either. I was thinking that if it were free then I would just get a bunch of 'vanity metrics' rather than active users who are serious about writing stuff and using the platform.
Ghost requires installation and tinkering (plugins, themes, etc). Silvrback is designed to give you something that looks great and doesn't take up your time. I believe that people shouldn't spend any time building a personal blog. You should spend that time on your products instead.
I could be wrong, but I think Silvrback probably has much better syntax highlighting than Ghost (do they have it at all?) and it gives you a bio page so you can consolidate your brand.