Postcard is now open source
10 months ago
- #newsletter
- #Ruby on Rails
- #open-source
- Launched Postcard in 2022 as a personal website and newsletter to stay in touch with friends after deleting social media.
- Postcard powers philipithomas.com, featuring monthly 'What I'm up to' updates since launch.
- Thousands signed up initially, and many still use Postcard today, though revenue is modest (dozens of dollars per month).
- Postcard is maintained by the author, running on a Mac Mini at home.
- Decision to open-source Postcard due to occasional updates, developer interest, and minimal revenue expectations.
- Postcard is a simple Ruby on Rails app with few dependencies, making it easy to customize and run.
- Added 'Solo' mode for single-site hosting, simplifying deployment for open-source users; hosted service uses 'Multiuser' mode.
- Includes Dockerfile and render.yaml for easy deployment to Render.
- Encourages users to check out, fork, and build with the open-sourced Postcard.