raphael-gold
raphael-gold on Hacker News
Thanks! Looking forward to get your feedback :)
Posted by
raphael-gold on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @07:38AM
from the self-post dept.
Last February, we launched on HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26248123 the first version of weweb.io http://www.weweb.io/. Since then, we made a slight pivot and wanted to let the community know about it.The tool was initially meant to let people visually build static websites' front-ends on top of any headless system. Between March and this summer, we received tons of feedback which led...
thanks! Just corrected :D
Thanks, any feedback on the tool would be highly appreciated!
That's a really good point. Agreed that we should perfect one solution before extending to other ones. We might start with Nuxt as weweb mainly works with vue.js at the moment. We'll let the community know on our public roadmap:
https://weweb.canny.io/
appreciate, thanks and please share your feedback with us if you give the tool a try - that's the most valuable thing we can get from you folks!
yes, actually a good portion of the users using Airtable asked for it, but it means that we might develop a back-end dedicated to this. We are exploring it at the moment. I sent a message to Colin to discuss the Clerk integration ;)
looks like it could be possible :) I just sent you a message so we can discuss it further!
Well the good news is that we already have the Strapi integration! You can try it right away if you'd like :)
As for the hosting, right now people ask us directly and we send them their static files, later people will just have to click a button and configure the deployment microservice to deploy the files wherever they want. We didn't plan to enable using weweb on-premise.
Agreed, they are building a really great product.
We are (at this stage) still very different though:
with weweb, you can build full layouts with various elements and manage the CSS of every single element directly from a GUI in a no-code editor, just like in a Webflow.
In Stackbit's no-code editor, you can change the position of ready-made sections and change some of the props of these sections (text, links, etc.). You cannot however build a section from scratch 100% in no-code like you would do in a Webflow (or weweb) using grids/flexboxes, drag & dropping elements into these containers, updating all the CSS parameters visually, etc. You'd have to do it in the code in Stackbit today.
Same goes with Tina CMS. They do not offer a comprehensive no-code editor like weweb or Webflow and we are very different for that reason.
The cool thing that Tina and Stackbit manage very well (and that we don't), is the ability to add a in-line visual editor in an existing react project to change the content and some of the properties visually, but it is limited to these properties.
What we do on the contrary is offering a comprehensive no-code site builder where marketers would build 90% of a custom website and developers would add custom coded vue components in the drag & drop editor for the extra 10% that cannot be built in no-code (+ make some of the properties of these components editable from the GUI).
Hope this makes sense?
Good question. Wordpress is number 1. It is the biggest site builder that has a GUI for marketers and that's open to developers. Only, it is in PHP, so we don't directly compete with them. Webflow, Squarespace and the likes are not direct competitors, but they are site builders that we sometimes compete with for some users. Does that make sense?
Currently it is not available but that's the next feature on the list! We are thinking about integrating Firebase and
https://supabase.io/ to start with. We are also taking a look at the possibility to manage all the users & authentication from Airtable. What would you prefer to use as an authentication service?
To start with Stackbit I believe you need to start with one of their themes and stackbit would be added on top of it. While you can start from a blank page in our tool. In their editor, the customization possibilities are limited in no-code compared to a comprehensive no-code website builder.
I understand. When you say self-hosted you are talking about the websites generated or the full app?
On the previous version of our website we actually dedicated the home page to marketers and had a link in the nav called "For Developers". The for developers page started to rank on google on some requests like "visual builder for react". We are revamping this page now and we'll add it again on the site.
Thanks for the feedback on the video, it's really useful. Makes me think that on the developer video we should probably start from a blank site and add a custom component in the editor right away.
no unfortunately the editor supports only Chromium based browsers but we are planning to expand support to other browser engines as we grow :)
I discussed this with the guys at Vercel a few weeks ago, this is definitely something we'll look into when we improve our React support. We'll also enable a one click deployment to Vercel so you can do a Next SSR + deployment on Vercel in one click. This should be possible by the end of Q3 this year.
oh wow, thank you. You are comparing us with giants and I feel we still have a lot of work to do on the editor to catch up with them. But we are working hard to ship improvements fast! Feedback are always welcomed, that's how we improve, so, much love for our early adopters <3
correct! It should be working now :)
yes they are exportable, but it is on a on-demand basis. Not so many users asked for it yet, so we didn't build this feature in self-service but it is in our backlog. We want to make sure anyone can deploy the static files on their own infrastructure, but we are just waiting for more demand to build it in self-service. You can actually go upvote for it on our public roadmap:
https://weweb.canny.io/feature-requests
yay! good luck with webase, good vibes in the name too :D
cool that you felt there should be a solution to this problem too. Let us know what you think about the tool, I'd happily share point of views on how to solve this problem.
cool, great feedback. We'll look into implementing bandwidth restriction instead of page view, I had the same conversation with an agency yesterday and they were leaning toward your point of view.
great question! From my perspective, stackbit is made for large corporates willing to add a no-code layer above an existing Jamstack site. This provides additional customization option to marketers compared to a headless CMS only.
Our approach is different because you would build your site from scratch using weweb, which gives you much more customization possibilities on the front-end than a stackbit, but it would not be possible to add weweb "on-top" of an existing react or vue website.
Absolutely, the Jamstack ecosystem is just beginning.
Yes that makes sense. Though, it would be hard to apply edits limits because the number of edits can vary greatly, independently from the purchasing power of a customer (for example a startup would change it's home page every other day while a large corporate would barely touch it once a quarter). The bandwidth or page views limits seem to be raising the same issue and the logic for us is simply to avoid server costs that would be too high for a single site that would pay a basic monthly subscription.