What it can do
A tour of what comes built in, in plain language.
A home page, sections, an archive
A polished front page, with room for featured pieces and a list of recent articles. Separate landing pages for whatever kinds of writing you do — news, opinion, reviews, essays — each with its own page and its own feed. Everything you publish is kept and dated, so readers can find an older piece in seconds.
- A front page you can arrange around featured pieces
- Section pages (name them whatever you want — News, Opinion, Reviews, whatever fits)
- A searchable archive of everything you've ever published
- A tag system, so readers can pull up everything on a given topic
- Individual pages for each author with their bio and everything they've written
Small touches that matter
The things serious publications have and personal sites rarely do. Every one of them sits quietly out of the way until a reader wants it.
- Light mode and dark mode, with a proper toggle
- A "save for later" list that stays on the reader's own device
- Highlights and notes, so readers can annotate as they read
- A reading progress bar, so readers know where they are in a long piece
- A reader panel with bookmarks, highlights, progress, and one-click citations
- A reader-adjustable font, size, and spacing, for people who read differently
- Print styles that turn any article into something worth printing
The basics of running a publication
Everything a publication has that a blog doesn't — the small details that make a website feel like a real outlet rather than a feed.
- A byline on every article, linked to the author's own page
- More than one author per piece, with credit to each
- Series, so you can group a multi-part investigation or column
- Corrections, shown on the article with a date and explanation
- Drafts and scheduled publishing, for pieces you want to hold back
- A full history of every change, so you can always look back
Other kinds of writing, already set up
Things that don't fit neatly into "blog post", but often belong on a publication — each with its own page layout and index.
- Reviews — books, films, podcasts, and documentaries, with ratings and structured details
- A library for longer works, one chapter per page, with reading progress saved
- A glossary, with pop-up definitions wherever a word appears
- A reading list of books you recommend, grouped by category
- A quotes page, for collected bits worth keeping
- Primary source documents — court records, freedom-of-information papers, anything you want kept on the record
- Two small games (a word scramble and a sliding puzzle), if that suits your publication
Search and sharing, built in
The things readers and search engines expect, ready from the start.
- A search bar that works on your own site, with no outside service
- A proper link preview when someone shares your article on Slack, iMessage, or social
- A feed for the whole publication, plus one per section and one per writer
- A listing of every page for search engines to pick up
A handful of plug-ins, each optional
None of these are required. Turn on the ones you need and leave the rest blank.
- A newsletter sign-up, through a small independent email service
- A quiet analytics tool that doesn't track readers across the web
- Comments, without cookies or tracking, if you want them
- A contact form that sends straight to your inbox
- A browser-based editor, so people who don't want to work in a text editor can still publish
- Automatic translation into over eighty languages
- Links to tip the publication or an individual writer through Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee, or Patreon
Built to stay out of your way
The technical choices all point at the same goal: a site that loads quickly, doesn't fall over, doesn't cost much to run, and stays yours.
- Plain text files — easy to read, easy to move, easy to keep safe
- No database to maintain
- Free to host on services like Cloudflare Pages or Netlify
- Fast on any connection, including slow ones
- Works on an old phone, a new laptop, or a screen reader
- The whole thing is open-source, so you can see exactly how it works