Before Town

Why?

Simplenote as a note app has existed for years and keep simple and reliable. It can publish notes and automatically sync updates. As long as these published notes are organized in some format, they can become blog posts! That's what this service do.

demo: https://before.town/@limboy

Step 1.

Create a new page in Simplenote App, fill the content with some format.

``` [[pages]] title = "Blog" url = "https://limboy.me" [[pages]] title = "About" slug = "about" url = "http://simp.ly/publish/F9byhJ" [[pages]] title = "RSS" url = "https://before.town/@limboy/atom.xml" [[posts]] title = "用 telegram 构建数字花园" slug = "use-telegram-as-digital-garden" url = "http://simp.ly/publish/tNL8Rz" date = 2024-06-09 [[posts]] title = "Why Objective-C" url = "https://app.simplenote.com/publish/FR8V9c" date = 2024-06-12 ```

There are 3 sections here.

1. Content within ``` uses TOML language
2. pages will appear as blog's navigation in the top.
3. posts will become blog's posts.

For posts, date is needed, slug is optional for pages or posts, if not provided, it will use simplenote's uri as slug.

Step 2.

Publish this note

Step 3.

Chat with telgram bot: @beforetown_bot

input command: /set_homepage_url, then provide the simplenote url generated in Step 2. if everything goes well, you will get a link to your new blog.

Shortcodes

You can use these shortcodes in pages / posts.

use {{ comment(url="https://t.me/by_limboy/148") }} to add comment section(replace the t.me url).
use {% callout(type="info") %} FYI. {% end %} to create a callout section.
use {% gallery() %} list of ![](imgurl) {% end %} to create a gallery effect.

Tips

It will take about 5 minutes to bring Simplenote's latest content online.
You can customize uri(@someone) by change username (send /set_username to bot).
append .txt to a page's url to see its' markdown content. i.e. https://before.town/@limboy/use-telegram-as-digital-garden.txt

Terms of Service

We has a zero tolerance policy for harassment and disrespectful, hateful, and/or violent content that targets an individual's protected characteristics. We will remove or limit accounts or content containing: