kbrgl / rucksack

🎒 Rucksack is an open-source alternative to Substack.

Rucksack

Rucksack is an open-source platform for hosting your newsletter. It's built on Rails 6, and provides a pretty homepage where readers can subscribe or read your posts. It also includes a dashboard for managing your newsletter.

⚠️ Rucksack is currently in alpha—I do not recommend using this in production.

Installation

Not sure yet. I imagine it's some combination of the following steps:

1. git clone https://github.com/kbrgl/rucksack.git
2. cd rucksack
3. Configure your newsletter details. (See below.)
4. bin/bundle
5. bin/yarn
6. bin/rails db:create
7. bin/rails db:migrate
8. bin/rails server

If something doesn't work, email me and I'll help you get set up.

Configuration

1. Configure your newsletter details in app/models/newsletter.rb
2. Change public/favicon.ico
3. Change app/assets/images/logo.png

Roadmap

I'm not sure when I'll have time to implement these, if ever. If you want to take a stab at something, shoot me an email!

• Tests
• Auto-saving editor
• ProseMirror+Markdown instead of Trix+HTML
• Scheduled publish
• Prettier emails
• Unsubscribe button in emails
• API docs for headless use
• Settings page that includes publication name
• Analytics
• One-click deploy

Prior Art

Rucksack is inspired by Substack, Revue, and Buttondown.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the GPL 3.0 license. You can email me if this doesn't fit your needs.