SoloHive - Your Blog. Your Domain. Your Rules.

Introduction

I would like to introduce a new project I have created called SoloHive. SoloHive is a self hosted blog script that pulls your posts from the Hive blockchain and then displays them on your domain.

With SoloHive, you are in control of where your content is read. You are in control of the site layout and design. You are in control of what web domain you have. SoloHive gives you more control of your content with the benefits of the Hive blockchain storing your data. There is less need to be reliant on centralized front ends, when you can serve up your content on your own terms. SoloHive is an effort to move us towards the goal of decentralization.

For as awesome as the major front ends here on Hive are, they are centralized with a decentralized back end. You play by their rules. With SoloHive you can take some of that power back into your own hands.

And when you spend so much time and effort creating great content on Hive, wouldn't you like to have users come to YOUR site? Looking at your ads? Your links? Your content? And have the ability to drive users outside of the Hive ecosystem to land on your site instead of some front end you feel you are locked into?

This is why I created SoloHive.

How to Get Started with SoloHive

We (my partner Claude and I) purposely and willfully designed SoloHive to be as user friendly as possible. We know everyone isn't a computer scientist, so we wanted to take away as much of the fear as possible.

5 Files

There are only 5 files total. Let's go ahead and list them here:

config.js
- app.js
- index.html
- post.html
- style.css

And to get started right away, you just need to edit 1 file, config.js with the text editor of your choice, like notepad.

Editing config.js

config.js was commented so that a person with little or no coding knowledge can edit it with very little trouble.

Let's take a quick look at how easy you can get set up.

Just edit this to reflect your Hive account.
hiveUsername: "dudeontheweb",

This is a really cool feature. If you want to have a site for a community, we have got you covered. Just put the community id in between the quotes and SoloHive will go into community mode even if there is a Hive user already set. Leave it blank to go back or stay in single user mode.
hiveCommunity: "", // e.g. "hive-174578"

These settings are for your personalizations. Make the site your own.
siteTitle: "My Blog", // Displayed in the header & browser tab
siteTagline: "Thoughts, ideas, and more.", // Shown under the title in the header
siteUrl: "https://yourdomain.com", // Your domain (used for share links)
postsPerPage: 10, // Posts per page — max 19 (Hive API limit)

This right here is another cool feature. You can filter your Hive feed by a tag. So if want your site just to be a showcase for your photography, just put the "photography" hash tag in there. Want a gaming site, put that "gaming" tag in there. Travel blogging your thing? The "travel" tag is where it's at. It will just show your posts with that hashtag. Just think, if your account has content on Hive with multiple topics you are passionate about, you can now spin up a site for each topic!
defaultTag: "", // Filter to one tag only — leave "" for all posts

The comment setting. This pulls the comments from the post and displays which ones get shown. You can set the reputation value to filter out spam or low rep commenters.
minCommentReputation: 20,

Social media links. Again we got you covered. And yes we still call it twitter, not X. 🤣

hive: "yourusername", // Links to hive.blog/@yourusername
twitter: "", // e.g. "yourhandle" (no @)
instagram: "",
youtube: "",
website: "", // Any other URL — shown as a globe icon

Ok now we are getting into the juicy settings, the side bar. Here is where you can add things to make the site truly your own. Got that post that is evergreen and still does pretty well? You can still monetize it even long after Hive has paid out.

Short bio shown at the top of the sidebar.
aboutText: "Welcome to my blog. I write about topics I care about. All content is stored on the Hive blockchain.",

SIDEBAR WIDGETS - Paste any HTML snippet (AdSense, Buy Me a Coffee, Amazon Associates banners, email signup forms, etc.) into a slot. Leave a slot as "" (empty backticks) to hide it entirely.

widget1: ``,
widget2: ``,
widget3: ``,

Foot text. Customize this at the bottom of your page.
footerText: "Powered by SoloHive. Content is censorship-resistant and permanently stored on-chain.",

Footer widget — paste any HTML snippet here (e.g. a banner ad, affiliate disclosure, email signup). Leave as "" to hide.
footerWidget: ``,

And that's it. Pretty straight forward and as easy as we can make it. The config.js has easy to follow instructions in it to be up and running as fast as possible.

Hosting

This is what I think is the best part. You can host SoloHive on most webhost that host static files. That's it. No back end scripting, no Python, PHP, Node and no databases, because Hive is the database and JavaScript does all the heavy lifting.

Free hosts like Github Pages, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, Nekoweb and Neocities will work.
Note: free hosts tend to employ anti spamming and caching routines, so your mileage may vary. We're working on that.

Paid hosts, there are so many out there I'm not even going to try to list some. But you can get some really cheap basic hosting and your own domain name and that will get you up and running SoloHive in no time.

SoloHive GitHub Repository

Our GitHub repository is right here:

https://github.com/dotw-hive/SoloHive

You can check out a live demo that is set to my personal Hive account:

https://dotw-hive.github.io/SoloHive/

I encourage you to download SoloHive and get it up and running, and then tell us what you think.

What's next

I will be posting SoloHive project updates when they happen. Currently we do have a list of items to address and features that we would like to add. Like one thing I can tell you about is creating more design templates. Right now there is just a Medium style design. We plan on keeping that template while we still test the script and hopefully get feedback from people who use SoloHive.

Plus I will be coming up with some ways to use SoloHive in creative and fun ways. Tips and tricks, tutorials and of course updates. And if you guys have any feedback or suggestions, let's talk about it in the comments.

This project came about from having conversations with fellow Hivers who have told me that they love the censorship resistance and owning their own data that Hive brings. Then to turn around and tell me that they would never think about starting a blog to monetize and drive traffic to any Hive front end, and the reasons are many. I want Hive to grow. And with the advancement of AI, I was able to bring an idea I had for close to 5 years to life.

Let me know what you think. Are Hive front ends where it's at or would you like to be able to create a website with your design choices, your ads, your hosting, your domain and having your content on Hive and keeping your traffic?