Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to lightweight Blog / Tumblelog engine "embr"
Hey everyone, For the past few weeks I've been working on a new lightweight blog engine powered by Codeigniter called "embr". I've stuck the source on Github and would love to hear any feedback or new features to add. Features: - Basic image and text posts - Tag & Category support - Disqus commenting - Infinite-scrolling on index pages - Tumblr style "reblog" is nearly complete (which will allow reflagging of posts across self hosted domains) Check out the source on Github: https://github.com/laurencedawson/embr The live demo can be viewed here (username: [email protected] pass: qwerty)…
Embr is a lightweight blogging engine built on the CodeIgniter framework, designed for users who want a simple self-hosted alternative to Tumblr. It supports text and image posts, tags, categories, and Disqus comments… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. lightweight Blog / Tumblelog engine "embr" launched in 2011; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
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With social media and now AI, its important to keep the indie web alive. There are many people who write frequently. Blogosphere tries to highlight them by fetching the recent posts from personal blogs across many categories. There are two versions: Minimal (HN-inspired, fast, static): https://text.blogosphere.app/ Non-minimal: https://blogosphere.app/ If you don't find your blog (or your favorite ones), please add them. I will review and approve it.
Apr 2026 · text.blogosphere.app · its alternatives →
- 2
blogstatic.io▲581A bit of context… I've been building https://blogmaker.app since April 2021, 5 years now. The launch tweet: https://x.com/BlogmakerApp/status/1383742023627247630 I had built it initially as a personal challenge to see if I could have a working product for 20 hours worth of work, and I did it. This was way before AI tools. A few months later, I included a Stripe button and the first payment came immediately in. In September 2022 I decided to focus (give up my contract gigs as a designer/dev). I took out a personal loan for $20K and then an angel…
2024 · blogmaker.app · its alternatives →
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You simply: 1. Connect your device. 2. Create a top-level `handwritten.blog` folder. 3. Every new notebook in that folder becomes a draft on https://handwritten.blog/ I hope this eventually obviates the need to look at the ugly upload interface you have to use to now upload your writing.
Jul 2026 · handwritten.blog · its alternatives →
- 5
Inspired by the design and UI/UX of apps like Notion, and utility of open-source apps like StackEdit, I decided to create a minimalistic, local-only WYSIWYG Markdown editor. Some features worth highlighting: - Monaco editor and Prettier integration for code snippets - Tables (apparently the holy grail of WYSIWYG editing) - Embeds (for CodePen, CodeSandbox and YouTube, most useful for HTML or JSON exports) - Accepts Markdown paste-in, and "exports"/generates HTML, Markdown and JSON outputs - Collaboration (with real-time awareness and initial commenting system, available only when…
2023 · editor.vrite.io · its alternatives →
- 6AS
2021 · dynablogger.com · its alternatives →
- 7
Hey all, I’ve made this bot, it fetches every story that enters the HN Top 10, summarizes it with AI to a tweet-sized textlog note and publishes it. textlog.cc offers these endpoints as RSS/Atom through textlog.cc/u/hn10.rss and textlog.cc/u/hn10.atom so you can subscribe easily. Enjoy!
Aug 2026 · textlog.cc · its alternatives →
- 8NE
Extremely simple note-taking and blogging without any sign up required. Create your own online notebook in seconds.
2019 · notepin.co · its alternatives →
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A blogging platform based only on Amazon S3 (and your browser) - matteobrusa/Tumbless
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Heap▲113Mobile blogging platform with beautiful multimedia posts
2015 · thisisheap.com · its alternatives →
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FlowBlog▲10A modern, minimalist blogging platform for creators
2025 · writeonflowblog.vercel.app · its alternatives →
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Pagecord▲122Hey HN I’ve been at a loose end for the past few days so I decided to build a thing. I’m largely devoid of original ideas so I built a (micro-) blogging app with a slight twist: you run it using email. All you need is an email account. No new tools to wrangle. No password to forget. Compose in your favourite email editor and send to a secret address. Pagecord does the rest. It's great for bloggy long-form writing, but it’s maybe even more fun for micro-blogging your thoughts as you would a Twitter feed (you can subscribe to people/blogs using RSS). I figured nobody would pay so it's…
2024 · pagecord.com · its alternatives →
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- 14SA
Hey guys, I made a post about this about a week ago and was told to create a Show HN post. So here we are! Squabblr is a hybrid that takes Twitter style posting and combines it with Reddit style commenting. It came up from a personal want where I liked using Twitter to see what people I'm interested in are up to, but found that the reply system left a lot to be desired. It's very hard to have or follow conversations with their UI. While Reddit provided a great commenting system but didn't support following people very well (or had much usage of it at all). So I decided to create Squabblr.…
2023 · squabblr.co · its alternatives →
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A static tumblelog generator available as both a Perl and Python version - john-bokma/tumblelog
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Extremely simple note-taking and blogging without any sign up required. Create your own online notebook in seconds.
2023 · notepin.co · its alternatives →
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2017 · dmitri.shuralyov.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! This is a personal project I finally got round to completing and shipping. It’s a simple feed of articles written by real people with interesting things to say. I wanted to explore some new technologies I haven't had a chance to try before, mostly rust and LLMs. As I browse HN each day I find myself most drawn to the content on personal blogs: people who have interesting things to say, from their own point-of-view, on a whole range of topics. Rather than being interested in particular topics, I’m more interested in reading from interesting people. This isn't a particularly new idea,…
2024 · 100kb.danhill.is · its alternatives →
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- 21EP
We built this 2 months ago, but put a new landing page on it, added some features, and made it publicly available without requiring an invite.
2013 · postach.io · its alternatives →
- 22IR
2017 · postleaf.org · its alternatives →
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Vortex▲5Create customizable, beautiful and modern blogs in a minute
2021 · hydralite.io · its alternatives →
- 24MA
Still pretty rough ... Emphasizes: 1) Simple, no-frill dashboard for managing posts (files). 2) Lightweight markdown editor 3) Relationships: taxonomy (file tagging) and fast linking (content to other posts) Some of the important key bindings I have are ctrl+c for code, ctrl-L for linking text to other posts. Right now this is baked in but I'd want to allow users to customize it. It's still pretty beta but let me know what ya'll think! Here's the github page if you want to help out: https://github.com/keera/matrix
2014 · ec2-54-83-122-123.compute-1.amazonaws.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →