a free no-code website builder that turns your site into a vintage OS

[d.eastwood]

For the last couple months I have been working on MeridianOS (https://meridianos.zip)*.  It came about from my own need/want to redo my website and it snowballed... Visitors boot into a desktop with a searchable nested folder file system, image galleries, A/V posts, blog style posts, password protected folders, built-in Applications (a music player, retro game console emulator, 1bit paint and more), and even a built in webring. Users can customize their site with custom colors, backgrounds, icons, screensavers or choose from the built-in options. All built through an admin dashboard ran locally from their computer. no coding required. and entirely free and open source. If people like it and want to use it, I'll keep supporting it and adding new features. If not, I'll continue to make it for myself.


*this is a demo site showcasing features. it works on mobile, mimicking a phone's home screen, but is best views on a desktop for full functionality. this site builder* was also vibe coded using Claude Design.


let me know your thoughts

*added the word builder 9/16

[KeyJayHD]

I'm going to dive further into this as I did an initial link click out of curiosity, but OMG this looks incredible! Very well done so far and interested to see more 

[d.eastwood]

I'm going to dive further into this as I did an initial link click out of curiosity, but OMG this looks incredible! Very well done so far and interested to see more 

appreciate the kind words!  I easily have 200+ hours in building this

[ScottyMonkey123]

Interesting... I like web operating systems, even if it's mainly for show.

[Noah_S]

So your website looks like an OS, and in your other thread you say that you used AI to make it.

I would have the AI wipe out days of work on accident and not be able to get the info back, it would constantly want to skip ahead without refining, and also make mistakes that it would blame on my user error when it was its mistake.

I would never have been able to create the website I created without it

I don't want to be spending so much time editing and building a website

and with people's views on AI, I'd rather be upfront about it instead of omitting that fact.

These quotes are all from the other thread I linked.

Here you are advertising a site builder that does what you had AI do for your own website. If you didn't use AI to make this too, why not use your own project to make your site to show off what it can do? You wrote about having to fix it where the AI messed up when making your site, but if this builder doesn't require coding, wouldn't it have been much simpler to make something with it? I use a CMS, joomla, and it's much faster to make a simple site with it than it is to find the missing ; when I code extensions for it. And if you did use AI to make this site builder, where did what you wrote about being upfront go? Please explain, this makes no sense to me.

[Pip]

So your website looks like an OS, and in your other thread you say that you used AI to make it.

Tangential, but I have a dev friend or two that are generally anti-gen AI but because they're forced to use it by their weirdo employers on the day to day, there's this sort of "slipping" where they end up employing it in their personal projects, too, despite being fully capable of making something with their own two hands.

Oftentimes these are projects that are more tethered to spaces online that are naturally going to be hostile to the product they're pushing.

I mean, if we look at the web revival page on the melonland wiki, it runs counter to the ethos underpinning it along multiple parametres: https://wiki.melonland.net/web_revival

I just don't know how to breach the topic with these peers in a way that doesn't get them defensive. Its difficult every time. One friend made a sort of RSS feed that had locally-produced AI summaries that were supposed to keep people in "the know". I had to ask if that was really better than having the first paragraph or two of the article because its filtering stuff through a specific analytical lens. I think that killed their enthusiasm for that side project a little, but I don't think its put their vibecoding-on-the-side to bed.

Luckily I have a family member that's a fullstack dev and despite having a literal NFT phase years ago, has completely sworn off AI slop. 

[d.eastwood]

Here you are advertising a site builder that does what you had AI do for your own website.

yeah I used AI to build the site builder. then used the site builder to build my own site.

it also says in my original post here that it was vibe coded using claude design..