The World in Prose

It might seem like more of the same, but I assure you it isn’t. Writing with nothing but a terminal open is a delight; it has a certain romantic and melancholic feel. No one has asked for my email, nor does anyone know my name. You access the prose community using your SSH keys, and it displays a simple front-end without any frills—yet, oh my friend, it’s tremendously beautiful for someone who doesn’t need to impress or sell you anything.

I’ve spent over a decade building modern interfaces so intuitive that, on many occasions, I reached a level of detail that would have felt insulting if I put myself in the shoes of the possibly blasé end user.

Today, I see the beauty of what’s basic yet intelligently developed. Hey, let’s not forget we’re talking about a blog. Nothing to do with beer.

Those of us who love the Internet are going through mixed times: on one hand, we’re immersed in automating information with Machine Learning and grappling with the uncertain and perhaps terrible future for humanity with AI. On the other hand, Web 1.0. stopped existing a long time ago. Impure social networks flood our digital experience in a complete dystopia ruled by the absurd: guided by ideological slogans, entertainment that’s sludge for empty minds promoting neo- and pseudo-ideologies with no depth, meant to fragment and silence anyone who has something decent to say.

Prose is just a trivial example, but it can turn into a powerful weapon for those who enjoy the smell of the trenches. Something akin to decentralization with a community of people who think, like my friend Dani, whom you can find at El Bestario de Robledo. Plus, hey, we’ve got a cool Discover system where people can find you easily, although I warn you that’s the only glimpse of a social tavern you’ll get here.

I hope these lines have whetted your appetite. If so, and if you choose the red pill, let’s see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Let’s get on with prose

We’ll assume you already have some (very) basic IT notions if you want to embark on this tuna boat. If some of these technical terms sounded like Chinese to you, here we go:

As we mentioned, prose uses your SSH (Secure Shell) keys to create your user profile, so you can start creating whatever it is you need to share with the world. Or with your cousin. Your SSH key is made up of two “subkeys”: a private one and a public one. The private key resides on your machine, and the public key is stored on the server you want to operate on, in this case, Prose. More about SSH here: https://www.ssh.com/academy/ssh/protocol To communicate with the server, we use SCP (Secure Copy): a widely used tool in the Linux ecosystem that lets you transfer data within the same network (which we’ve accessed thanks to our glorious SSH keys).

Each page or post is written in Markdown: a tremendously elegant markup language that, essentially, “translates” various special characters into HTML on the fly, so you don’t have to deal with clunky tags or finicky interfaces. This very writing format is in itself a statement of what prose is: a commitment to smart and concise simplicity. Find more about it in this short tutorial. Getting started is really straightforward once you grasp the concepts above. If not, I recommend revisiting them before creating your account, because you could end up drowning in that shot of tequila.

Make sure you already have an SSH key available on your machine. Open a terminal and type this in your Linux or macOS (I trust your Sherlock Holmes instincts to find the right commands if you’re on Windows):

$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

If it doesn’t give you a key, you’ll need to create one with:

$ ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "user@domain.com"

Follow the terminal instructions to complete the process, and if you’re on macOS, make sure to link your private key with the SSH agent like this:

$ ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

To create your account, simply connect via SSH to the prose CMS:

$ ssh new@prose.sh

Pick a unique username. This isn’t Twitter; chances are pizza is still available. You’ll be able to brag about how original you are for the rest of your days.

Create a post in .md format and copy-paste this (or not):

# Hello, world!

My first steps in Prose thanks to [hayder](https://hayder.sh)

Publish with:

$ scp ~/blog-directory/\*.md prose.sh:/

The public URL will be under the subdomain of your glorious username: https://pizza.prose.sh

With the desire to make you reflect on how you’re using the Internet and having offered you a beautiful alternative to the social circus, I bid you farewell for now.