[COMPOST / Distributed Press] Announcing Distributed Press Version 1.0!

Tue Apr 25 20:33:56 EDT 2023

*Distributed Press, the tool developed by Hypha Worker Co-op and sister
project to COMPOST magazine, has undergone a major rewrite. We are excited
to share the latest version.*

*NOTE: As you've probably noticed, we haven't used this mailing list in a
while for updates related to COMPOST and Distributed.Press, and we want to
make sure these emails are reaching you. Send us a quick reply to
hello at distributed.press <hello at distributed.press> or hello at compost.digital
<hello at compost.digital> to let us know you've gotten this. Thanks!*

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

Dear Supporter,

We are absolutely thrilled to share Distributed Press Version 1.0 with you!

Thanks to a grant and support from the Filecoin Foundation for the
Decentralized Web <https://www.ffdweb.org/> and after months of working
away on v1 of Distributed.Press, we’re happy to announce that it’s ready to
be tried and tested!

*What is it?*

For those who aren’t in the loop, distributed.press is a tool developed at
Hypha that makes it easy to publish static websites to the Distributed Web
<https://getdweb.net/>. Specifically, it gives you an HTTP API to send tar
archive files <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_(computing)>, which it
will then extract and publish onto IPFS <https://ipfs.tech/> and Holepunch
<https://holepunch.to/> (formerly hypercore-protocol). It also comes with a
custom DNS server, making it easier to set up custom domain names for your
sites.

*Project Overhaul*

This has involved a major rewrite
<https://github.com/hyphacoop/api.distributed.press/pull/48> in how
Distributed Press works under the hood.

It’s now easier to set up DNS records across all our supported protocols
via the DNSLink <https://www.dnslink.io/> specification and
Distributed.Press’s newly built-in DNS server.

We’ve changed how peer-to-peer (P2P) protocols are integrated so that we
can easily add new ones like BitTorrent or Earthstar. We have also reworked
the way we publish to IPFS <https://www.ipfs.tech/> so that new updates can
pe published to the network almost instantaneously without needing to wait
for DNS updates. And we have upgraded our Hypercore
<https://github.com/hypercore-protocol> integration to use the newly
rebranded Holepunch <https://holepunch.to/> libraries which adds
significant performance and reliability improvements.

If you’re part of a community that does P2P file transfer and would like to
see your protocol integrated, open up an issue on our GitHub repo
<https://github.com/hyphacoop/api.distributed.press/issues/new?assignees=&labels=&template=support_new_protocol.md&title=Support+new+protocol%3A+>
 with information about your protocol and we can chat about integration
from there.

*Sutty CMS*

As part of this effort we have been working with Sutty
<https://sutty.nl/en/> on integrating Distributed.Press into their Content
Management System (CMS) and using it to have a graphical front-end for
editing sites.
[image: publish toggle screencap]*Screenshot of "Publish to DWeb" toggle in
the Sutty CMS*

Sutty generates static web sites
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_web_page> using Jekyll themes
<https://jekyllrb.com/> and a dynamically generated front-end for themes.
With the Sutty CMS, you can use a graphical, user-friendly interface to
author posts and customize your site, and then enable their
Distributed.Press integration to have Sutty publish your site to IPFS and
Hypercore in addition to the HTTP version.

We have a small walk-through on how to publish a site with Sutty in our
documentation <https://docs.distributed.press/deployment/sutty>. We
encourage groups seeking more customized themes to reach out to them
directly.

*GitHub Publishing*

In addition to Sutty, you can also add Distributed.Press to your
existing GitHub
Actions <https://docs.github.com/en/actions> publishing flow. This works
well if you’re already publishing a static website in a continuous
integration to HTTP or even if you’ve been publishing to a single protocol
like IPFS. In order to “DWeb-ify” your site, you just need a
Distributed.Press instance and to take an extra step
<https://github.com/marketplace/actions/publish-to-distributed-press> to
upload your static site folder over HTTPS.

You can find more detailed documentation on our new docs website
<https://docs.distributed.press/>.

If you’d like to integrate Distributed.Press into other continuous
integration environments or are having trouble setting it up yourself, you
can reach out to us by email <%20hello at distributed.press> or open an issue
on Github <https://github.com/hyphacoop/distributed.press>.

You can also check out the auto-generated swagger interface
<https://api.distributed.press/v1/docs/static/index.html>.

*Documentation*

Speaking of which, we have a new documentation website
<https://docs.distributed.press/> built with Next.js. We’ve added some
information on how Distributed.Press works as well as steps to self-deploy
your own instance and upload data to it.

*COMPOST Magazine*

This initial release is coming out as we finalize our third issue of
COMPOST Magazine (coming May 2023!). We’ve been developing a new theme for
Sutty based directly on COMPOST, so that our authors can write their pieces
within the CMS, as well as ensure that we can deploy and serve COMPOST
reliably across different protocols.

Make sure to subscribe to the COMPOST mailing list
<https://lists.hypha.coop/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/compost> as well as
follow COMPOST on Twitter <https://twitter.com/COMPOSTmag> and the Fediverse
<https://social.coop/@compost> to get notified as soon as it’s out.

If you have any questions or want to explore collaborations, feel free to reach
out to us <hello at distributed.press>.
[image: Distributed Press supporter list]

Thanks for reading and supporting our work! <3

Warmly,
mai

-- 
mai ishikawa sutton
lead editor + steward // COMPOST Magazine <https://compost.digital/>
project manager // Distributed.Press

mastodon:
@compost at social.coop <https://social.coop/@compost>
@mai at social.coop <https://social.coop/web/accounts/6103>

twitter:
@compostmag <https://twitter.com/COMPOSTmag>
@dwebpress <https://twitter.com/dwebpress>
@maira <https://twitter.com/maira>
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