[pioul]

The concept and simplicity make me think of Ghost's (http://ghost.org/features/): free, open source, near-minimalist, and self-hosted.

The seemingly only advantage is that Dropplets doesn't require a database, and its landing page is amazingly beautiful, clear, and to the point (though Ghost's "features" page is slick as well).

On a more technical note, click events seem to be propagated up the player on the landing page, closing it when toggling HD for example.

[dkuntz2]

But, Dropplets doesn't have a built in post editor, and requires that your posts contain lots of required metadata, and in a really arbitrary order.

[pioul]

Yes, Ghost is, at least to me, superior in numerous ways, and especially for that awesome editor, but I also believe it depends on usage.

[unicornporn]

But Ghost uses node.js which almost nobody can actually host themselves, because the hosting that people already pay for doesn't (and perhaps wont) support it. Node may be hip and all, but PHP still seems like the right choice for something as simple as blogging software to me.

[justinavery]

Exactly why we put together hostghost.io, to make it simple to use ghost without the headaches of the hosting.

[chc]

Almost nobody? A $5 virtual host can run Node.js.

[unicornporn]

Yes, almost nobody. Certainly, everybody CAN get a VPS from Digital Ocean. But should I tell my friends that have never touched a commandline and really struggled with just uploading Wordpress.org (and running the installer) to their shared hosting to start administering a VPS running Linux.

The abysmal HN crowd, no problem. But I bet most people running a WP installation on their shared hosting are not as proficient as you believe.

[straws]

Stuff like Wordpress and Ghost exist to have a sharecrop of cheap hosting services with it pre-installed — with Ghost it just looks like JS was the language the developer (a front-end dev on Wordpress. . .) was most familiar with, And That's Fine

[xux]

It's closed for signup... that's annoying.

[wmeredith]

Yep. It's also not self-hosted. Other than the fact that these are both CMS's with modern design on their landing pages, I don't see the correlation. They're very different types of software.

[joshthewanderer]

According to the features page:

"You can host it on your laptop, or you can host it on a public server. The code is open, and so is the MIT license."

It's currently not public, so I would imagine at the moment it's all hosted on their servers, but according to their blog[0], they're going public on the 14th of October, meaning it should be self-hostable from then, one would assume.

[0] http://blog.ghost.org/ghost-0-3-1-maintenance-release/

[iancarroll]

Ghost was released to Kickstarter backers. I'm self hosting it right now at ianthedeveloper.com.

It's not released to the GP currently.

[wmeredith]

Ah. I did not catch that. Thanks!