Hello HN!

Maker here. I've made a ton of improvements (like, a lot) over the past 8 months and I'm excited to share an update with you all on DynaBlogger.

As a web developer, I very often find solutions to problems in blogs, so I like to give back by publishing a post whenever I find a solution to a problem on my own or learn something new.

For my blog I have used many tools over the years, from a heavyweight CMS like WordPress to static site generators and everything in between. I do prefer using a CMS for this, so I can just edit a post, hit publish and be done with it, rather than writing a post locally and pushing to a repo waiting for CI to actually publish it.

So I have used WordPress for most of the time, but I never felt comfortable with it somehow. For one, it's often overkill for simple sites and blogs; second, it's not always easy to keep a WordPress site fast and secure. I have never considered alternatives like Medium because I want to own my content on my domain and be free to customize my blog as I please.

So I built DynaBlogger out of my own need and I've been hacking on it for some months now. With DynaBlogger I propose an alternative publishing platform that has all the essential features most people need, and nothing more, for a focused writing experience with no distractions.

DynaBlogger differs from a heavyweight CMS like WordPress in that it offers a simplified setup with no plugins and not too many settings etc.

However, it also differs from the several "minimalist" alternatives available because it's not too barebones and offers the ability to fully customize your theme with the built in code editor, if you wish. You can edit templates directly in the browser as well as upload assets and see changes in realtime. You can have multiple themes installed with one active, so when you make changes you can work on a copy and activate it when ready. No need to work on files locally, and upload a new version of the theme to see the changes with your content. Pretty handy. DynaBlogger doesn't have many themes yet but I will be adding more over time, and soon any user will be able to share a theme on a marketplace with other users (maybe even sell them at some point).

Perhaps the most similar blogging platform to DynaBlogger is Ghost, with a few key differences. DynaBlogger doesn't offer newsletters and memberships yet (perhaps in the future), but it offers easier customization of the themes and is more affordable. DynaBlogger also cares more for some details concerning for example SEO, redirects, publishing via email, etc.

It's a fully managed platform, so you can just focus on writing content and everything else is taken care of.

Tech stack for the curious:

- App written in Ruby on Rails
- Postgres for the data
- Redis for background jobs
- memcached for caching
- Hosted in a Kubernetes cluster managed by myself

I would appreciate if you could give it a try. You can sign up for a free 14 days trial and if you decide to stay, please use the coupon code 6649CB68 at checkout for a 15% discount. You can also import content from a WordPress or Ghost blog, so you can try it with your own content.

Let me know if you have any questions or any feedback, really!