A home page and sections
A polished front page, plus separate pages for the kinds of writing you do — news, opinion, reviews, essays, whatever fits. Each one gets its own index and feed that readers can follow.
Free · Open-source
A free way to run your own publication online.
You write in plain text. Project Broadsheet turns it into a real website — with a home page, sections, an archive, a newsletter, and the kind of small touches readers actually notice. No monthly bill. No account. Nothing that locks you in.
A website for your writing, without the middlemen.
If you've ever wanted a proper home for your writing — one that looks like a publication rather than a blog, doesn't charge a monthly fee, and can't be taken away by the company that hosts it — this is for you. You bring the words. Project Broadsheet handles everything else a publication needs.
A searchable archive
Everything you publish is kept, dated, and searchable. Readers can find an older piece in seconds. No posts disappear behind a paywall or get lost in a feed.
A newsletter, if you want one
A sign-up form in the footer, connected to a small independent email service (Buttondown). Your subscriber list belongs to you — take it with you any time.
Thoughtful touches for readers
Dark mode. Save-for-later bookmarks. Highlights and notes that stay on the reader's own device. The small things serious publications have, and personal sites rarely do.
An author page for every writer
Each contributor gets a page with a short bio and everything they've written. Readers can follow a specific writer, not just the whole publication.
Made to last
No database, no login system, nothing that falls over when a server hiccups. The whole site is plain files — fast, cheap to host, and easy to move somewhere else if you ever want to.
Independent writers and small teams.
A writer starting out
You want a real website for your work, not another account on someone else's platform.
A small magazine or newsroom
A handful of people publishing together, who'd rather put their budget into reporting than into software.
A student paper or classroom
Teachers and students running a publication as part of learning. Everything is free and no one needs an account.
Someone leaving a newsletter platform
You've outgrown Substack or Medium and want your archive, your readers, and your work on a site you own.
Write, save, publish.
You don't need to be a developer. If you can format an email, you can run a publication on Project Broadsheet. There's no dashboard to log into and no software to install on a server.
1
Write
Each article is a plain text file, written in a simple formatting style called Markdown — essentially typing an email with a few light conventions for headings, links, and images.
2
Save
Your writing lives in a folder on your computer, and a copy is kept online so nothing is ever lost. Every change is recorded, so you can always look back at an earlier version.
3
Publish
When you're ready, the site rebuilds itself in under a minute on a free host. Your readers see the update, the search index refreshes, and the newsletter (if you use one) can go out on the same schedule.
Close to nothing.
The whole yearly bill for a publication running on Project Broadsheet is usually the price of a domain name. No platform fees, no per-subscriber charges, no revenue share.
Project Broadsheet itself
Free. Always. Use it for anything, including paid publications, with no restrictions.
A place online for the site
Free on services like Cloudflare Pages or Netlify, up to very generous limits that most independent publications never hit.
A domain name
Around $10–15 a year from any registrar. This is the one part you pay for, because it's yours.
A newsletter service
Free up to a hundred subscribers on Buttondown, then modest flat fees after that. Only needed if you actually run a newsletter.
Sites already running on it
Seeing a real publication is worth more than a list of features. Have a look around.
A project, not a product.
Project Broadsheet is made and maintained in the open by one person. You can read every line of code, take it in your own direction, or simply use it as-is. If you build a publication with it, I'd love to see it.