Sortable text post publisher

Question

Description

I have lists of ideas. Despite their dubious quality, I would like to be able to present them to the public in an filterable, searchable and readable manner.

An idea is essentially a super-simple blog post with only simple formatted text [1] and image content. I would like to be able to tag them and provide an interface for sorting them, so others can easily browse them.

The requirements would be:

• Creation of simple posts with formatting
• Allow creating of post templates with pre-defined fields
• Post browsing view allow for sorting by tags, which can both be numerical (range from 1 to 5) or categorical.
• Post reading view separate from post browsing view
• Ability to link to individual posts

Similar Products

I currently use Google Docs (example) and GitHub issues (example) for this purpose. However, GitHub issues does not allow for numerical tags nor sorting of numerical tags. It's also a bit confusing to link someone to.

Google Fusion Tables was really close to this. However, it's viewing mode and the ease of editing text inside that interface (it requires raw HTML to be input) is less than ideal. Additionally, it is not possible to link people to individual entries. Regardless, Google Fusion Tables has been discontinued.

Airtable is also really close, but doesn't have anything close to a mark-down formatted cell.

Wikity is an admirable effort at taking this idea to it's logical extreme and building a rational, investigative social network around it. However, the project is dead and the interface is so messy I don't know how to navigate it.

[1] By "simple", I mean what the StackExchange markdown editor for this site already supported by this website.

Answer 1

(FYI: Found your question via HN!)

If your ideas consist of "super-simple blog post[s] with only simple formatted text and image content", why not just use blogging software like Wordpress? It has all of your requirements:

• Creation of simple posts with formatting
• Templates (native or via plugins)
• Sorting by tags or categories
• Reading view (the actual blog post) separate from browsing view (the main feed and/or archive)
• Ability to link individual posts
• Simple editor (okay, YMMV, but I find the new Gutenberg editor to be quite simple)

People can comment on your posts too if you enable it.

You can get a free hosted instance of Wordpress at Wordpress.com (note that this is different than Wordpress.org -- the com is a business that builds and supports the org), or you can search around for your own provider. If you're associated with a university, they may offer some form of Wordpress instance (though you may want to check who owns the content and what will happen if you disassociate).

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If you're okay with more proprietary solutions, Microsoft's OneNote Software is also a possibility:

• Organize ideas into notebooks (and notes within each notebook)
• Sort by categories (notebooks) or tags
• Link individual posts (I've had trouble with this in the past not working as I expected)
• Simple WYSIWYG editor

There's the online version that lets you share your notebooks with others, though I'm not sure about costs/versions.

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Alternatively, you could check out something like Jupyter notebooks (basing this off your profile description). I'm less familiar with what these offer (in relation to your requirements), but there may be enough customizability for your needs.