Build and host decentralized websites from your Mac

Release Notes
 
Planet Feature Update 13 - Sepia Improvements · Accept ETH Donation on Web · API Console · Experimental Web Client

Sepia

Sepia is a template optimized for microblogging. In this update, we’ve introduced several improvements to enhance this use case, allowing you to share thoughts, images, and even audio or video more frequently and easily using Planet.

sepia-microblog

Writing long-form articles isn’t something most people do regularly, so many users rely on different platforms—one for longer posts and others for quicker, more casual updates. For instance, Vitalik writes his long-form articles on vitalik.eth, but for more frequent, lightweight posts, he turns to platforms like X and Warpcast.

The Sepia template, along with the new ⌘+D quick post shortcut, makes it easy to set up your own microblog on Planet.

quick-post-new
⌘+D Quick Post Input

With this update, the quick input box now supports images, videos, and audio files.

Planet’s main sites, planetable.eth and olivida.eth, have switched from the default Plain theme to the Sepia theme. You can also check out a live demo of the Sepia theme here:

https://sepia.olivida.eth.sucks/

Accept ETH Donation

We've added a new feature that lets you easily enable ETH donations on your site.

accept-donation
Right-click My Planet and select "Accept Donation"
donation-settings
Enter your ETH address in the "Accept Donation" settings

Visitors can click the “Donate” button in the navigation bar, connect their wallet, and send donations directly to you.

donation-modal

Right now, donations are supported with ETH on the mainnet. In future updates, we’ll add support for Layer 2 networks and continue refining this feature.

If you’re a content creator or open-source developer who’s previously used PayPal or Ko-Fi for donations, consider giving this method a try. No need to ask for permission and no one can hold back the funds—everything is just code.

Customizing and Sharing Color Themes

template-settings
Right-click My Planet and select "Template Settings" to customize the Sepia theme colors.
template-settings-colors
You can also export your custom theme as a JSON file to share, or revert to the default colors.

Here’s an example of a Sepia site with a dark color theme customization:

https://k51qzi5uqu5dgy9qlqct5gsbggde32kc8wkz6419j67t9aw38bmyuwtkzmwdtn.eth.sucks/

API

We've enhanced Planet's built-in REST API and added an API Console to view recent requests.

api-console

You can check out Planet's API documentation here:

https://github.com/Planetable/Planet/blob/main/Technotes/API.md

We’ve also developed an experimental Web Client based on the Planet API. Here’s how you can try it:

cd ~/Library/Containers/xyz.planetable.Planet/Data/Documents/Planet/Public/
git clone https://github.com/livid/planet-web app

Enable the API server in the settings:

planet-api-server

If you're using port 8086, you can access the Web Client at http://localhost:8086/app/.

experimental-api-client

Other Fixes and Improvements

  • Fixed the img tag width when inserting Retina Display screenshots.
  • When following a Planet, ENS will now be automatically extracted from eth.limo or eth.sucks URLs if pasted.
  • GPS data is now stripped from image files when sharing photos.
  • Fixed and optimized an issue related to parallel processing during Planet site saving and publishing.
  • Each article now has a CID-based permanent link, which will remain accessible via most IPFS gateways, even if the site’s IPNS address fails to resolve.
  • Smart Feeds now show the total number of entries.
  • If the prewarm option is enabled, tags and archive pages will also be prewarmed on the gateway whenever new content is published, improving load times for first-time visitors.
 
Planet Feature Update 12 - WalletConnect · New IPFS+ENS Gateway · IPFS Control Panel · Monochrom

This update introduces improvements to the WalletConnect feature, a new gateway for IPFS+ENS websites, a new avatar set, and several IPFS-related enhancements.

WalletConnectV2

We've updated the Wallet Connect integration. Now, you can easily scan a QR code to connect your wallet and tip your favorite creators. This update also paves the way for additional Ethereum and L2 features.

New IPFS/ENS Gateway

There is a new fast gateway for IPFS/ENS websites, and you can select it from Settings. You will get shareable links on the eth.sucks or crop.top domains.

Currently, the two new domains are running on the same backend. In the future, they may each have their own backend.

By the way, Cloudflare has decided to no longer maintain its IPFS gateway. As of this writing, there are really only three usable general gateways for DWeb:

IPFS Control Panel

A new IPFS control panel displays the IPFS version, peer count, and a live chart of bandwidth usage.

Open Any IPFS Resource with the Local Gateway

You can find a new Open menu under File, or use the keyboard shortcut CMD+O to open any IPFS resource with the local gateway.

Easily Reuse Tags for Your Posts

You can now select from previously used tags when adding tags to your post.

New Avatar Set: Monochrom

99 new black-and-white avatar images for your Planet site. A new setting allows you to save a circular version of the avatar to better fit certain template designs.

New Quick Share Gesture

Simply drag and drop an image into the article list to share it.

New Quick Post Input

Click on the toolbar or use the keyboard shortcut CMD+D to access this new input designed for microblogging.

Fixes and Improvements

  • Fixed unexpected behavior of the article list on macOS 12/13.
  • Use keyboard to navigate between search results.
  • Use // or # as comment lines in aggregation settings.
  • Hero image width and height are included in the variables for templates.
  • A local notification will appear when a new CID is successfully published to IPNS.
  • New Planet setting: Do Not Index. You can ask search engines not to index the site by adding a robots.txt rule file.
  • New Planet setting: Prewarm. The app will access a newly published post on the currently selected gateway, creating a cached copy on the gateway to make future access faster.
  • Insider builds now have the Planet-Insider name for binaries, allowing them to coexist with regular builds.
 
Planet Feature Update 11 - Search · Faster Gateway for IPNS · Pin Articles · Export/Import Articles

This update brings several new features: Search, Faster Gateway for IPNS, Pin articles, and Export/Import for Articles.

Search

Press CMD+F to open Search. You can search both your own articles and those from the planets you are following.

Search

Faster Gateway for IPNS

In previous versions, we used ipfs.io or cf-ipfs.com to access IPNS. Now, we have a new, faster option powered by the excellent eth.limo and NameSys. Both are community projects.

For example, IPNS for this site is k51qzi5uqu5dgv8kzl1anc0m74n6t9ffdjnypdh846ct5wgpljc7rulynxa74a and you can open it with the following address:


IPNS + ipfs2.eth.limo

https://k51qzi5uqu5dgv8kzl1anc0m74n6t9ffdjnypdh846ct5wgpljc7rulynxa74a.ipfs2.eth.limo


Usually, it's much faster than:

The new gateway can also be used with CIDv1 like this:


CIDv1 + ipfs2.eth.limo

https://bafybeihyeuqc7nv2zfwt3x6bglgxrca2xglt26jzzqpi4zxci5czxwskku.ipfs2.eth.limo


When you use Open in Public Gateway feature of Planet, it will open with ipfs2.eth.limo now.

Pin Articles

Articles can now be pinned to appear at the top of the list. This new feature is available when you right-click on an article.

Pin Article

Export/Import for Articles

You can export an article as a data package and import it to Planet on another Mac, or simply airdrop it if they are on the same LAN.

Export Article

Fixes and Improvements

  • Improvement: Full rebuild is now faster by utilizing all CPU cores
  • Improvement: Better implementation for monitoring changes in published folders
  • New: Prewarm article on public gateway for caching and faster loading
  • New: Edit button on the toolbar
  • Fixed: Scroll position of newly created articles
 
Planet Feature Update 10 - Peering with eth.limo · Sepia Template · Improved IPNS Publishing and Site Rebuilding

This update contains important improvements for performance, and a new template design: Sepia!

Peering with eth.limo

eth.limo is the best gateway for ENS websites. Now, with direct peering added, your new content will show up faster on eth.limo because direct peering can significantly reduce the time eth.limo spends connecting with your local IPFS node.

New Template: Sepia

Sepia is a brand new template that is great for microblogging.

Here is a demo site of the new template.

Features:

  • Show the latest content in chronological order
  • Minimalist two-column design on desktop
  • Responsive design works great on both desktop and mobile
  • Supports video, audio, and multi-picture content
  • Supports tags and archives

We'll continue to improve this new template as we receive feedback from you. In the next update, we'll introduce a whole new editor designed for microblogging.

Improved IPNS Publishing

A confirmation dialog will now show if you try to quit the app while it is performing IPNS publishing (indicated by an animating hourglass in the sidebar). Previously, quitting the app during this process could result in unfinished IPNS publishing and cause the website to fail to resolve.

This improvement should significantly reduce the possibility of an IPNS site being unable to resolve.

Improved Rebuild

Now there are two types of rebuild: Quick Rebuild and Full Rebuild. A Quick Rebuild will only regenerate the site's homepage file, index.html. A Full Rebuild will also regenerate every single post with your currently selected template for the site. Quick rebuilding is useful when you are debugging a SPA (single page application) template, such as Croptop.

Misc. Fixes and Improvements

  • Fixed an issue where attaching files on macOS 14 was not working
  • Fixed an image interpolation setting that caused blurry avatars
  • Fixed an issue where the favicon was not removed when the avatar was unset
  • Added support for pasting images with the Quick Share dialog
  • Added Bonjour advertising for the Planet API service
  • Added a random pick feature in the Avatar Picker
  • Added a new API endpoint: /v0/id
 
Planet Feature Update 9 - Tags · Archive · New App Icons · Select Hero Image · Pinnable

In this update, blogging with Planet is now a more feature-complete experience! We are so excited to bring you Tags and Archive, as well as enhancements for pinning.

Tags

You can now add tags to posts either through Article Settings or via a new tagging icon in Writer.

Each tag will then generate its own page, so all posts with that tag can be viewed from one page.

For example, this is the tag page for all release notes of Planet:

https://planetable.eth.limo/release-notes.html

Archive

A new Archive page has been added. It contains links to all the posts on the site.

We have updated the three built-in templates to accommodate the new Tags and Archive features.

Change App Icon

A new Icon Gallery has been added for you to choose a new icon for the Planet app.

If you hold Pinnable NFT Series A, then you can unlock two special icons that have animations in the Dock upon startup.

To use this animated icon, first you need to connect your Ethereum wallet. You can do so by scanning the QR code with the Rainbow Wallet app on your phone.

Select Hero Image

When you have multiple images attached to a post, you can now select one of them as the hero image. The hero image will be displayed when you share the post link on social sites like Twitter or Discord.

Enhancements for Pinnable

Multiple enhancements have been implemented for the Pinnable integration. Now, when you enable Pinnable for your Planet sites, you will experience more instantaneous feedback from the service.

The icons next to the Planet site title mean it's pinned.

As soon as you see the pinned icon next to your site title, you can rest assured that extra copies have been saved on the remote Pinnable servers. As a result, your site will be faster and more reachable from various IPFS gateways.

 
Planet Feature Update 8 - Article Settings · Avatar Picker · Quick Sharing · Pinnable · To-Do List Syntax · Embed YouTube

Article Settings and New List View

A new Article Settings context menu has been added. Now, you have the ability to change a blog post into a page. This feature is particularly useful for creating site-level content such as "About Us", "Contact Us", or any other similar pages.

With these new settings, you can design your site navigation similarly to planetable.eth. This can be done by designating certain articles to be featured as items in the site navigation bar.

By clicking on the list filter, you can filter articles by type, making it easier to find specific pages.

Filter

The view of an article item has also been redesigned to reflect its type and attachments.

Article Item View

Planet Avatar Picker

We have designed this new avatar picker to curate various beautiful picture collections that can be used as your Planet avatar.

The first collection, Nostalgia, consists of 99 abstract, simple pictures designed by yihanphotos.eth.

Quick Sharing

You can now drag and drop pictures onto the app icon for quick content sharing.

Pinnable

Pinnable is a new service for pinning ENS/IPNS websites.

Pinned with Pinnable

When you create and publish decentralized websites using the Planet app, your Mac serves as a node on the IPFS peer-to-peer network, hosting your sites. By utilizing pinning, additional copies of your websites are distributed across the entire network, resulting in quicker loading times and increased accessibility. This eliminates the need to keep your laptop on as a server for laptop users. Each time you publish new content, Pinnable initiates syncing with your node, ensuring that you don't have to keep your Mac on continuously as a server.

You will always maintain control over the authoritative version of your content.

To-Do Syntax

Planet's Markdown writer now supports To-Do list syntax, and you can switch items on or off from the local article view.

Embed YouTube

If you include a YouTube link in the content, it will now automatically convert into a player.

Other Improvements

  • Drag to reorder my planets or the following planets.
  • A progress bar shows during the rebuilding of a planet.
Progress when rebuilding a Planet
  • Fixed issues with moving articles.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred when the app had been up and running for an extended period.
  • A template can now have its own settings dictionary, opening possibilities for more template-level customizations.
  • Improved scrolling performance in the Markdown Writer.
  • Markdown Writer date picker can select 'Today'.
 
Planet Feature Update 7 - Star Types · Select Date · API Server · Repo Location and IPNS Key Manager · Social Integration · New App Icons for Insider and Debug Builds

This update includes new Star Types, Planet API server, support for moving repo, IPNS key manager, more social links, new icons for the Insider and Debug builds, and other bug fixes and enhancements.

Star Types

When you add a star to an article, now you can select from several star types to give the star more specific meanings. Some star types make it great to use Planet as a To-Do organizer. Besides right-clicking, you can add/remove star from the toolbar too.

Stars

In our next feature update, we'll make it possible to filter articles based on star types.

Select Date for Posts

Added a date widget to specify the creation date when writing an article.

Writer Date Picker

API Server

When the Planet app runs, it can now provide an HTTP API server. Here are all the current supported methods, and we will expand the documentation to include more details. The API server opens possibilities to third-party apps, especially mobile ones.

  • GET /v0/planets/my - List all my Planets
  • POST /v0/planets/my - Create a new Planet
  • GET /v0/planets/my/:uuid - Info of a specific My Planet
  • POST /v0/planets/my/:uuid - Modify my Planet
  • POST /v0/planets/my/:uuid/publish - Publish My Planet
  • GET /v0/planets/my/:uuid/public - Expose the content built
  • GET /v0/planets/my/:uuid/articles - List articles under My Planet
  • POST /v0/planets/my/:uuid/articles - Create a new Article
  • GET /v0/planets/my/:uuid/articles/:uuid - Get an article by UUID
  • POST /v0/planets/my/:uuid/articles/:uuid - Modify an article
  • DELETE /v0/planets/my/:uuid/articles/:uuid - Delete an article
Planet API Server

You can enable the API server and set a username and password from the app Settings.

Repo Location and IPNS Key Manager

This is still quite an experimental feature. Please use it with caution.

The default location for Planet app data is:

~/Library/Containers/xyz.planetable.Planet/Data/Documents/Planet

You can move this location from settings now. If the new location is on iCloud Drive or Dropbox, you can utilize cloud storage for backup.

Also, all IPNS keys are backed up with iCloud keychain if that cloud feature is turned on in your iCloud settings. You can find the new Key Manager under the Tools menu.

Full Sync has yet to be ready as we are testing more scenarios to make Full Sync reliable and easier to use. Again, this is an experimental feature; please use it cautiously.

More Social Integrations

You can now add those social identities to show them as icon links on the site homepage and site info panel.

  • Juicebox
  • Mastodon
  • Twitter
  • Telegram
  • GitHub
Juicebox Social

New Icons for Insider and Debug Builds

We release Insider Builds from time to time. They contain new features meant to be tested more before being included in the stable releases. You can get Insider Builds from the GitHub Releases page:

https://github.com/Planetable/Planet/releases

If you are running Insider Builds, you will notice that now it has a dedicated blue icon resembling the Xcode and other Apple dev tools. And we added a dedicated update channel for insider builds so that they can be auto-updated too.

You will get the yellow icon if you build Planet from the source.

Icons: Insider and Debug

More icon choices are coming in the next update. For example, new designs from the Pinnable project we recently launched. Another blog post about Pinnable will follow soon.

Fixes and Improvements

  • Added CSS for table and to-do list rendered from Markdown
  • Use absolute URL for hero images for maximum compatibility with various crawlers
  • Fixed a crash when attaching a video
  • Fixed audio player as it was not responding in the previous release
  • Use a custom SF Symbol of Ethereum for the button for tipping
  • Various style fine-tuning to the Plain template for better contrast
  • Added a subtle border and shadow to the planet icons on the sidebar for better contrast
  • Added a new variable for templates to use: social_image_url
 
Planet Feature Update 6 - Video Thumbnail · Hero Image · Published Folders Dashboard · Template Browser

It's the last day of 2022 and some time zones have already entered 2023 when we release this feature update. Happy New Year! Thank you for your support for Planet this year.

A major update in Feature Update 6 is a brand new template called Grid. You can see it live at the following website:

yihanphotos.eth

yihanphotos.eth

The design of this template is optimized for images and videos. It has a responsive design that works on both desktop and mobile. To support this template, this update brought some new files and variables.

Video First Frame Saved as Image

The first frame of the video will be saved as an image file called _videoThumbnail.png. For example, this video of a red-crowned Amazon parrot:

The address of the first frame's image file is:

Hero Image

If the article attachment includes a wide enough image, the name of the image can be obtained in the template as a variable called heroImage. This will bring many new possibilities to template design.

At the same time, this file will be converted into two versions suitable for use in a grid layout: _grid.jpg and _grid.png. If the attachment includes a video, the first frame of the video will be the Hero Image. And two grid versions will be generated, such as:

Image files generated by Planet in this way during rendering have names starting with _ and are located in the same folder as the original files.

These generated files are only used by the template and do not appear in the attachment list.


The above is an introduction to the new template. In future updates, we will continue to bring updates to template design. Traditional blogging systems like WordPress, Jekyll, and Ghost have accumulated a lot of tried and tested designs for organizing information over the past decade. These are all areas that Planet, as a static website generator, needs to catch up on.


Published Folders Dashboard

Published Folders is a new feature that was added to Planet's feature update in October 2022, which allows you to publish any local folder as IPNS.

This feature can be thought of as a fully graphical interface for IPFS publishing, particularly suitable for publishing the build results of various static website generators. For example, Jekyll.

Previously, this feature was accessed through the Tools menu. Now you can find the new graphical interface management entry at Tools -> Published Folders -> Dashboard.

Published Folders Dashboard

Template Browser UI Improvement

The template management tool Template Browser now has a three-column layout to display more information. It also allows you to preview the design of the template's homepage list.

Template Browser UI
 
Planet Feature Update 5 - Connect Wallet · Published Folders · Move Article · Archive/Unarchive · Show IPNS/CID of Planet

With the release of Planet 0.11 in December 2022, you can now show your support for content creators by tipping with Ethereum. Here's how to use this new feature:

Connect Wallet

Under the main Planet menu, you'll find a new option called Connect Wallet.

Connect Wallet

To use this feature, simply click on the menu item and a QR code will appear. You can then scan the code using a wallet app that supports WalletConnect, such as MetaMask or Rainbow. This will allow you to connect your wallet to the app and access the tipping feature.

QR Code

While browsing ENS dWebsites, you'll see a new tip button in the toolbar. Simply click on the button and choose the amount you'd like to tip. You can select from a range of pre-set amounts to show your support for the content you're enjoying.

Tip Button Tip Tiers

When you click the Send button, a transaction will appear in your wallet app on your phone. If everything looks correct, simply confirm the transaction on your phone and it will be sent to the Ethereum network. The content creator will then receive the full amount you tipped, without any deductions. This is a simple transfer of funds between two Ethereum addresses. It's that easy!

Sending Transaction

Once the transaction is confirmed and sent, a browser window will open and display the details of the transaction on the Etherscan website. This will allow you to see the status of the transaction and track its progress on the Ethereum network.

Wallet Apps Support

During the development of this feature, we primarily tested with MetaMask and Rainbow. If your wallet app supports WalletConnect, it should be compatible with this new tipping feature. However, there are some differences in how these two apps support test networks. For example, MetaMask lets you switch between Mainnet, Goerli, and Sepolia, while Rainbow will stay on the initial network you select when you first connect.


That is the new tipping feature. And here are other improvements in this update.

Improved Published Folder

The new feature we added in the previous version, Published Folder, allows you to publish any local folder as an IPNS. If you are using static website generators, this feature can help you quickly publish the build results as an IPNS.

Automatically Publish

The new Automatically Publish option automatically monitors changes to the folder and updates the IPNS with the latest CID whenever a change is detected.

Move Article

You can now move articles between different Planets by right-clicking on an article and selecting a destination.

Move Article

For example, you can use a Planet as a draft area to write and adjust your articles. When you are satisfied with the result, you can move it to the Planet where you want to publish it.

Archive/Unarchive

You can now set your own or followed Planets to Archive status. Archived Planets are not displayed in the sidebar, are not automatically published or updated, but all data is retained locally.

To restore an archived planet, you can unarchive it from the settings panel.

Show Planet IPNS and CID

A new panel for displaying IPNS and CID information for planets has been added. If you need to view a Planet's IPNS or the latest CID, you can right-click and find the new menu option Show IPNS and CID to view this information.

Show IPNS and CID

Those are the new features and improvements in the 0.11 update. If you experience any issues, please send feedback to the developers or seek support from the community on these channels.

If you have found a bug, please let us know how to reproduce it by submitting it on GitHub Issues. We will investigate and fix the issue as soon as possible.

 
Planet Feature Update 4 - Publish Local Folders as IPNS · Filebase Pinning · Custom Code · RSS and Podcast Improvements

Welcome to Planet Feature Update 4, released on Oct 12. This release brought four new features and other fixes and improvements.

Here are all the changes between 0.9.2 and 0.10.0:

https://github.com/Planetable/Planet/compare/release-0.9.2...release-0.10.0

Publish Local Folders as IPNS

You can turn any local folder into IPNS now. This new feature can be found from the menu: Tools -> Published Folders

published-folders

That makes it easier to use Planet to publish static sites built with a generator like Jekyll, Hugo, or Zola.

For example, here is a static site built with Jekyll:

You can follow that IPNS with Planet too.

Filebase Pinning

Filebase: Pinned

Filebase provides 5GB storage space and a good pinning API for free.

https://olivida.eth.limo/9BE484CD-0EA5-4742-927E-FA56F7591CC2/

With a remote pinning service, you need to wait a little bit for the pinning service to fetch the content after each content update. As the sync is done, you can close the laptop lid, and your visitors will experience a faster and more stable load speed.

Custom Code

When you need to insert HTML code into the static site built with Planet, for example, analytics and comment systems, now it is easier to do that with the new Custom Code settings.

Right-click on My Planet and select Custom Code to insert.

Planet: Custom Code

You can insert custom code to three common locations:

  • Between <head></head>
  • After <body>
  • Before </body>
Planet: Custom Code

RSS and Podcast

Planet will now also generate an rss.xml when building the site. For example, the RSS 2.0 address of this site is:

planetable.eth.limo/rss.xml

If you have published audio content before, now Planet will also generate a podcast.xml compliant with Apple's Podcast XML standards. For example:

olivida.eth.limo/podcast.xml

Right-click My Planet to find the new Podcast settings. You can configure artwork, language, explicit content indication, and categories.

Podcast Settings

There will be more to be done for better Podcast support, and we will keep improving this feature.

Fixes and Improvements

  • Fixed an unnecessary CID change during site rebuild
  • Add security rules to block access to the localhost IPFS API port from the internal WebView
  • Prefer JSON Feed if multiple feed formats are found on a content source
  • Add Insider Build channel on GitHub for more testing before stable releases
  • Update the built-in IPFS version to 0.15. We also tested 0.16 and found it seems to have a new resource consumption issue. So we shipped 0.15 instead of 0.16 in Planet 0.10.
  • Use SecureField for all API tokens on the UI, preventing sensitive info from being leaked in screenshots or screen sharing.
  • 🌟 Added support to subscribe to IPNS published by Matters Labs

Those are the new features and improvements in the 0.10 update. If you encounter any issues, please send your feedback to the developers or seek community support from these channels.

If you have encountered a bug, please share with us how to reproduce it via GitHub Issues, and we will investigate and fix it as soon as possible.

 
Planet Feature Update 3 - dWebServices.xyz · Follow .bit · QoL Fixes

Welcome to Feature Update 3, released on September 18, 2022. We brought you two new features in this update and many fixes and improvements.

Here are all the changes between 0.8.1 and 0.9.2:

https://github.com/Planetable/Planet/compare/release-0.8.1...release-0.9.2

dWebServices.xyz

dWebServices.xyz provides hosted IPNS records. You can enter your API key and domain in the new Integration tab in Edit Planet. Whenever you update your content, the latest CID will be sent to dWebServices.xyz to be written in the hosted IPNS record. Then, in addition to the built-in IPNS record, you will get another hosted one. The hosted one may have better discoverability because it is on a well-connected server. This is especially useful for laptop users because you will not need to keep your laptop on to keep your IPNS record active.

Later we will introduce another integration with a pinning service. Then laptop users will just need to wait for a bit after each content update. As soon as a confirmation from the remote pinning service arrives, laptop users can close the lid.

dwebservices-api-key

Follow .bit

Now, when you Follow Planet, a new domain is supported:

.bit

.bit is also powered by smart contracts running on a blockchain. The underlying blockchain is Nervos Network.

Like ENS, .bit can have dWeb records, and you can set IPNS to your .bit domains. So it can have a website built with Planet. .bit has its own public gateway too. For example, you can access this blog via the following address:

https://planetable.bit.cc

One thing is different, .bit does not need you to pay gas when you update records. That is because a certain amount of gas fees are already included in the registration.

Improvements

  • Planet app main window can now remember position and size. Previously, due to a default mechanism in SwiftUI, users get the default size when closing and opening a new window.
  • Added a setting to select a preferred public gateway.
general-setting-public-gateway
  • Updated peering settings with Cloudflare. New content will be discovered by Cloudflare public gateways more smoothly.
  • Added CORS config for webui.ipfs.io, so users will be able to check local IPFS settings with webui.ipfs.io
  • Added support for internal links. Users can link another article or planet, and the app will select the item instead of opening it with the default browser.
  • When you link another Planet, for example planet://gamedb.eth, if you are already following, the app will select it. Or start trying to follow it.
  • Fixed an issue where the unread count is not updated.
  • Fixed an issue where Mark All as Read is not working.
  • Fixed a performance issue that causes a spinning wheel when checking for updates of the following Planets.
  • Added a share button for articles on the top toolbar.
  • Implemented a config to lower the connections opened by the IPFS daemon, thus lowering the resource consumption. We will provide a finer tuning UI for this in a future update.
  • Added showing ENS icon for following Planets
  • Added support to render Markdown in Planet about info. For example, now you can have links in the about field like this:
planet-info-markdown
  • Added a confirm dialog when unfollowing Planet
  • Use TabView in Planet edit window for better organizing more features
  • Added support to enter GitHub / Twitter usernames for social links on the homepage
  • Fixed an issue with URL encoding when opening Plausible.io Dashboard (Thanks to the PR by @Fatpandac)
  • Fixed a regression where the preview area stopped sync scroll position with editor area
  • Writer window can remember the size and position per Planet
  • Added support for self-hosted Plausible.io
  • Added a new variable hasAvatar for template designers to use to decide whether a Planet has an avatar image
  • When you set an avatar for a Planet, a 32x32 version is saved as favicon.ico
  • Added support to use WorldWideWeb by The Iconfactory to open locally built website for preview

Those are the new features and improvements in the 0.9 update. If you encounter any issues, please send your feedback to the developers or seek community support from these channels.

If you are pretty sure you have encountered a bug, please share with us how to reproduce it via GitHub Issues, and we will investigate and fix it as soon as possible.

 
Planet Feature Update 2 - Plausible.io · Podcast and Attachments · Templates · RSS Reader

This is the second feature update for Planet, version 0.8.0, released on August 13, 2022. The code for this update comes from the following contributors.

The following link is the changes between version 0.7.0 and 0.8.0.

https://github.com/Planetable/Planet/compare/release-0.7.0...release-0.8.0

Here are the new features and improvements in this release.

Plausible.io Integration

Plausible.io is an open source web traffic analytics platform. You can now enter your Plausible.io domain and API key in the info panel of Planet. And a new button will show you the traffic stats of your Planet.

For example, the following link is traffic data for planetable.eth.

https://plausible.io/planetable.eth.limo

Another example is from the official Plausible.io website:

https://plausible.io/plausible.io

Plausible.io is privacy focused. The platform does not collect personal information and does not even use cookies, so there is no need for a cookie banner to pop up on pages that use Plausible.io.

We will add support for self-hosted versions of Plausible in a future update.

Podcast and Attachment Support

You can now attach an audio file when creating content, or drag and drop the audio file into the writing window. An audio player will then appear on the page when you publish.

When you access Planets with audio in Planet App after 0.8.0, you will see a headphone button in the toolbar, and clicking it will launch a global audio player to play the audio content. The playback will not stop when you click between posts.

We will continue to optimize this global audio player in future releases.

If you drag and drop other formats such as PDF or DMG into the writing window, they will be included as attachments. Visitors can click the attachment icon in the toolbar to download them.

Improvements to the Built-in Templates

Planet currently has two built-in templates.

In this update, we have implemented these improvements to both templates.

  • Support for audio content
  • Link to the home page from the top area of posts
  • CSS improvements for video and image content
  • CSS improvements for iOS safe-area
  • Dark Mode support for the homepage of Plain

Feature parity of templates is an important goal of Planet. All of the built-in templates are open source, just like the Planet App, so if you find any issues with the templates, you can send us feedback via GitHub Issues or even PR:

Later this month, we will document how to build your custom templates.

For demoing what the template engine is capable of, here is a blog about retro gaming with the 8-bit template:

https://gamedb.eth.limo/

Built-in go-ipfs Version Update

Planet's built-in go-ipfs has been upgraded from 0.12 to 0.14. Starting with 0.13, Protocol Labs renamed the go-ipfs project to kubo, so when we need to mention go-ipfs in the documentation, we will use the new name kubo.

During the first startup after kubo update, there will be a migration for the repo. If your local IPFS repo has a large number of files, then this migration may take some time, just let it run for a while.

We will provide more GUI management features for the local IPFS repo in a future release.

RSS Reader

Actually, the initial release of Planet came with RSS capabilities. However, we didn't announce the feature because we felt some details were not good enough.

In this 0.8.0 update, we have improved and tested many aspects of the RSS feature, so now we would like to invite you to try it out.

Here are some interesting RSS feeds.

  • Low Tech Magazine: A site powered entirely by solar power, so it may be down on cloudy days.
  • Deep Look channel on YouTube: Amazing 4K videos of interesting creatures!

YouTube Channel: Deep Look

Many sites that update their content regularly are likely to have RSS feeds. An example is YouTube Channels. You can try putting the URL of a website into Follow Planet, and if an RSS feed does exist on the website, then you can subscribe with Planet.

If you encounter problems with RSS feeds, feel free to send feedback to the following community channels.

Local Notifications

We have further improved Local Notifications in this update. When you receive a notification for content updates from a Planet, click on the Notification to take you to the article.

Misc Improvements

  • The Markdown rendering engine has been replaced so that Planet now outputs GitHub Flavored Markdown, and that also cleared some crashes with Ink.
  • Now, when viewing posts, if you try downloading anything from the page, it works. Previously it did not work because we did not implement WKDownloadDelegate in web views.
  • Improved support for DNSLink. Note that if you want to follow a site via DNSLink, you need to specify the planet protocol in the Follow Planet window, e.g., enter the domain name like this: planet://zu1k.com
  • The TTL for IPNS records published from Planet has been adjusted from 1 week to 1 year. However, the lifetime of IPNS records depends on many factors. So, if you want to keep your IPNS records active, we recommend running Planet at least once a week. In an upcoming blog post, we will go into more details about this complex topic, IPNS and Pinning.

Those are the main new features and improvements in the 0.8.0 update. If you encounter any issues, you can give feedback to the developers or seek community assistance from these channels.

If you are pretty sure you have encountered a bug, you can tell us how to reproduce it via GitHub Issues, and we'll investigate and fix it as soon as possible.

 
Planet Feature Update 1 - Video · Data Layer Rewrite · ENS Support

This is the first feature update since we released the app in June 2022.

Video Support

Now you can attach a video to your post. Each post can have at most one video, then the post title and content serve as the title and description of the video. Currently, the app will not recompress the video, so please be mindful of the bitrate of the video you choose to share, as a higher bitrate would need more time to download.

This post has one video! And if you view it with an HDR-capable screen like the ones in the new 14 and 16-inch MBP, you will notice it is an HDR video.

A New Data Layer

We rewrote the components of how the app handles data. It solved some issues that occurred with the initial version, and it also made a lot of views faster. Previously, you will probably notice some slowness when switching to the Unread view. Now that slowness is gone.

From this version, the app starts to send notifications for the new content from the planets you followed.

Improved ENS Support

Now the app can load any ENS that has a working content hash. In the initial version, it only supported ENS with a feed.

If the ENS you follow has an NFT avatar, it will show in the app sidebar!

A faster gateway is used when you try to open ENS links with an external browser without ENS support, like vanilla Safari or Chrome! Here is a comparison. Which one is faster for you?


Planet is a native macOS app for building, publishing, and following websites and blogs on IPFS + ENS. With those decentralized Internet technologies, you have total control of your content, and your fans follow you directly.