Thanks for the bug report yuppiepuppie! Will roll out a fix for that one asap. By the way the app is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux, so all feedback across platforms is very welcome!
About the developer name, we tried to get Apple to use our "doing business as" name, but no dice. But thanks, it's very important to know what the first impressions are, to remove friction as much possible.
So, reading between the lines, it's a desktop app that makes a static website and it then checks the build output (not the source with a build command) into a GitHub repository for hosting?
Is it your own static website builder or did you consider using an existing one?
What type of model are you going for here? I can't see anything about pricing, but I see text encouraging users to "reach out to support".
You got it right! It's a Static Site Generator with Github Pages integration.
I was previously using WordPress and thought something that runs on my desktop with a pleasant UI could be better. I had some thoughts on how the interface should be and the features that would be cool to have.
Regarding the model, there are addons for purchase within the app (for example, different editors, scheduled AI-assisted blogging, etc). But all are fully optional and will remain that way. There's also a new "book-style" theme that folks can purchase, but the free ones are very professional also. I encourage users to reach out to Support because it's the early feedback phase and the key is to understand what are folks impressions with the product and any features they would really like to have.
So overall, the goal is UX and Developer Experience first, and further on there will be improvements and new offerings based on people's needs. Thank you for your feedback!
I'll be honest if you want feedback - as a developer I'd prefer a solution that builds on top of an existing open source static site builder. That way us devs can carry on using the tools and deploy options we know but our less technical colleagues who just want to put up a new blog post can use the nice CMS experience.
A tool that requires we switch the entire site building process over to it is a harder sell. Sorry to be negative!
An alternative, if you already use your own static site generator (SSG) like Hugo, is Frontmatter (https://frontmatter.codes/), a VSCode(ium) plugin that gives you a CMS/Content Management System over your SSG.
Kudos to PRSS Site Creator, I like the idea and I installed it on my mac. As soon as the app starts I get this error, Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, scandir '/Applications/PRSS Site Creator.app/Contents/Resources/static_themes' how can I fix it? thanks
If I go ahead and create a post I get "Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/Applications/PRSS Site Creator.app/Contents/Resources/static_themes/slate/manifest.json'"
Oh man, that's embarrassing. Is this with the Mac App Store (MAS) version, or the standalone MacOS "Universal" (dmg) one? Looking into it, I will push a new build soon.
Update: I pushed a new UX build, hopefully that addresses it, but otherwise let me know! I added the support email in my profile.
I actually cannot see the issue in my Mac Mini with the App Store build. So any more details would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!
This seemed like something I came across in r/WordPress discussion on Reddit. The problem here is that it's only for Mac, while we have a cross-platform solution.
PRSS indeed is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux! However I spend most of the time on Windows, so bugs on the other platforms sometimes are caught later on.
Will keep a closer eye on all versions, any startup bugs are a no-no. Hope you get to try it and share your feedback!
“PRSS” is a bit of an impenetrable name. I assumed it was some kind of variant of RSS at first, and I was looking to see what a PRSS site was. But it’s just a brand name, right? It’s “the site creator called PRSS”, not “a creator for PRSS sites”?
Naming things is truly hard! It's indeed the site creator called PRSS.
Before PRSS, I used WordPress and thought the concept of creating sites could be simplified and improved. "Press" was vague, so PRSS Site Creator was the alternative that came to mind, and for which shorter domains were available!
But I do agree that "PRSS" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. I hope that the "Site Creator" part of the name combined with good user recommendations can help with visibility on search engines.
Looks interesting from the screenshots. However after downloading on Mac, I get
"Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/Applications/PRSS Site Creator.app/Contents/Resources/static_themes/slate/manifest.json'"
and
"Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, scandir '/Applications/PRSS Site Creator.app/Contents/Resources/static_themes'"
errors.
Also, just a bit of feedback, your developer name on the app store is a bit sketchy <random digits> Canada Inc.
Thanks for the bug report yuppiepuppie! Will roll out a fix for that one asap. By the way the app is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux, so all feedback across platforms is very welcome!
About the developer name, we tried to get Apple to use our "doing business as" name, but no dice. But thanks, it's very important to know what the first impressions are, to remove friction as much possible.
So, reading between the lines, it's a desktop app that makes a static website and it then checks the build output (not the source with a build command) into a GitHub repository for hosting?
Is it your own static website builder or did you consider using an existing one?
What type of model are you going for here? I can't see anything about pricing, but I see text encouraging users to "reach out to support".
You got it right! It's a Static Site Generator with Github Pages integration.
I was previously using WordPress and thought something that runs on my desktop with a pleasant UI could be better. I had some thoughts on how the interface should be and the features that would be cool to have.
Regarding the model, there are addons for purchase within the app (for example, different editors, scheduled AI-assisted blogging, etc). But all are fully optional and will remain that way. There's also a new "book-style" theme that folks can purchase, but the free ones are very professional also. I encourage users to reach out to Support because it's the early feedback phase and the key is to understand what are folks impressions with the product and any features they would really like to have.
So overall, the goal is UX and Developer Experience first, and further on there will be improvements and new offerings based on people's needs. Thank you for your feedback!
Ah ok. So kinda in competition with something like https://cloudcannon.com/
I'll be honest if you want feedback - as a developer I'd prefer a solution that builds on top of an existing open source static site builder. That way us devs can carry on using the tools and deploy options we know but our less technical colleagues who just want to put up a new blog post can use the nice CMS experience.
A tool that requires we switch the entire site building process over to it is a harder sell. Sorry to be negative!
1 reply →
An alternative, if you already use your own static site generator (SSG) like Hugo, is Frontmatter (https://frontmatter.codes/), a VSCode(ium) plugin that gives you a CMS/Content Management System over your SSG.
Similar use case to PRSS.
Interesting, how does it “deploy”, assuming it just pushes to git? And looks like I can put this on any web-based vscode-alike as well?
Kudos to PRSS Site Creator, I like the idea and I installed it on my mac. As soon as the app starts I get this error, Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, scandir '/Applications/PRSS Site Creator.app/Contents/Resources/static_themes' how can I fix it? thanks
If I go ahead and create a post I get "Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/Applications/PRSS Site Creator.app/Contents/Resources/static_themes/slate/manifest.json'"
Oh man, that's embarrassing. Is this with the Mac App Store (MAS) version, or the standalone MacOS "Universal" (dmg) one? Looking into it, I will push a new build soon.
Update: I pushed a new UX build, hopefully that addresses it, but otherwise let me know! I added the support email in my profile.
I actually cannot see the issue in my Mac Mini with the App Store build. So any more details would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!
3 replies →
Does this static site generator require JavaScript?
This seemed like something I came across in r/WordPress discussion on Reddit. The problem here is that it's only for Mac, while we have a cross-platform solution.
PRSS indeed is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux! However I spend most of the time on Windows, so bugs on the other platforms sometimes are caught later on.
Will keep a closer eye on all versions, any startup bugs are a no-no. Hope you get to try it and share your feedback!
Typo, I mean Mac and Windows, didn't realise Linux is hidden in the drop down list.
“PRSS” is a bit of an impenetrable name. I assumed it was some kind of variant of RSS at first, and I was looking to see what a PRSS site was. But it’s just a brand name, right? It’s “the site creator called PRSS”, not “a creator for PRSS sites”?
Naming things is truly hard! It's indeed the site creator called PRSS.
Before PRSS, I used WordPress and thought the concept of creating sites could be simplified and improved. "Press" was vague, so PRSS Site Creator was the alternative that came to mind, and for which shorter domains were available!
But I do agree that "PRSS" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. I hope that the "Site Creator" part of the name combined with good user recommendations can help with visibility on search engines.
I think having it in all caps is what is making it confusable with RSS. Maybe Prss would work better?