Notes on a (I think) successful Hacker News (re)launch

Hi everyone.

I launched my blogging platform DynaBlogger (https://www.dynablogger.com) on Hacker News on Sunday and I am pretty happy with how it went!

I actually posted it to Show HN 8 months ago when I had a first version open to the public, but I didn't give it too much thought so I just posted at a random time when there was a lot of competition and it disappeared very quickly from the first pages. The design of the website was also poor so perhaps it didn't inspire much "professionalism" at the time, and I didn't communicate very well how my blogging platform is different from others and why people should try it.

I did a relaunch because A TON has changed since then in terms of features and usability as well as infrastructure, so it's like a totally new version now also with a more polished marketing website (which is also hosted on DynaBlogger itself, showing that with the flexible built in theme editor you can also create simple websites, not just blogs).

This time the launch went very differently. I choose to post on Sunday when it was morning in the US, since there's less competition during the weekends.

I had a much better result this time, I think not just thanks to the timing (which played a big part in it obviously) but also thanks to a better looking website and better copy which - I have been told - communicates better why I built the product. The platform is now also hosted in a scalable Kubernetes cluster, so I can scale more easily with the demand if needed.

Some figures:

• 204 points and 117 comments so far, mostly positive (there were a couple which weren't really negative but were not very useful either)
• a very long time on the first page and even at the 1st spot for a while, competing with news from BBC and others
• around 40K page views, 38K uniques and a whopping 2K concurrent visitors at peak!
• 560 signups!
• Also a DDoS and several crazy bots probing for vulnerabilities during the launch, which luckily didn't affect anything :)

Of those signups, several already cancelled their accounts because of the lack of built in comments, analytics and something else. I have now started to work on comments since it has been requested by a few people already. Even Ghost doesn't have built in comments after these many years, so that's why I didn't implement them before, but it looks like some people need them. It kinda makes sense for me because I use a third party services for comments on my own blog (https://vitobotta.com) now, so it's weird for me too that DynaBlogger doesn't have comments yet.

Many, many signups were from people who were just curious I guess, because they signed up with fake names etc and didn't really do anything after first signing in. Several people didn't even confirm their accounts so they didn't even sign in, which is weird, because they cannot be bots (I use Google's Recaptcha on the forms).

A few people who signed up and signed in tried several things to attack the app, with attempts of SQL injections, XSS, trying to use reserved subdomains (for example someone was trying to use subdomains like "mail.dynablogger.net" or similar and load a fake app to phish logins into an iframe, which is not possible. I restricted many subdomains that could be used this way, and also added some restrictions to iframes etc).

Someone also tried a DDoS from many IP addresses (these days it's easy to hire a botnet for cheap), but didn't affect the platform at all. Like I said above I also had a peak of 2K concurrent visitors when I was 1st on HN, so this was a good test - being it a blogging platform, I need to be prepared in the case even a couple of my users publish viral content at the same time.

Then there were several bots probing for all possible vulnerabilities thinking that this is WordPress, Drupal or some other unrelated thing.

What makes me happy about the signups is that several people are actually using the app and writing content already, and a few have even converted to paid already without even waiting for the trial to expire! This makes me super happy.

Another thing that makes me happy is that some people commented that the website clearly states the "what" and "why" (I hope you all agree! Let me know if you don't, and why please) and that the pricing is fair.

Finally, I am happy because many people before told me that there was no point in another blogging platform, that it was a David vs several Goliath kind of thing, and that I shouldn't bother. Well, as my wife put it, what happened to Goliath? :D

I know this isn't a WordPress killer because it's targeted at a totally different audience and cannot compete with all the features of WordPress by design, but what the many page views and signups show is that there is interest in a blogging platform that is simpler than WordPress but not too barebones like other options, and more affordable than Ghost (which is perhaps the most similar option to DynaBlogger). That if you just need a simple website or to publish content easily with a blog, DynaBlogger is a good option worth checking out.

I have no idea of how many signups will eventually convert to paid after the 14 days trial expires, but these stats already make me feel that I am not wasting my time and that this is a good project to work on as first project on my own.

Next, I need to implement the features that have been asked for the most, such as comments (which I started working on), import and export of content (some people had a valid concern that the platform might disappear at some point and they might lose their content; I am committed to keep this running for as long as I can and luckily it doesn't cost me much now and will be even easier as I start to have more paid customers, but it's anyway a valid concern), and some simple analytics.

I will try to keep the platform simple though, I don't want it to become bloated or less different from other more popular options which would make it less likely to be considered by some.

So yeah, all in all I'm happy with how it went this time, and need to think about launching on Product Hunt as well at some point. I suspect that will be more challenging somehow. I have failed to do real promotion of the product so far (always finding excuses to just code and not to things that I don't like doing or that I am not good at), so it's time to fix that.

Wish me luck! :D