Project Broadsheet — Blog Project Broadsheet is the free, open-source publication system for independent journalists and publishers. Own your content, your readers, and your platform. Forever. 2026-04-17T00:00:00Z https://projectbroadsheet.com/ Jon Ajinga hello@projectbroadsheet.com Introducing Project Broadsheet 2026-04-17T00:00:00Z https://projectbroadsheet.com/blog/introducing-project-broadsheet/ After a year of building, Project Broadsheet v1.0 is here. It's the publication system I wish had existed when I started. Today I'm releasing Project Broadsheet v1.0 — a free, open-source publication system for independent journalists, newsletter writers, and small magazines.

Why

I started writing The Freethinking Times in 2024 on Ghost. By month three, I was spending more time on CSS customization than writing. By month six, I was paying $30/mo for features I'd already built twice. By the end of the year, I had two choices: keep paying for a platform that couldn't do what I needed, or build my own.

Project Broadsheet is what I built.

What it is

It's an Eleventy starter — but that undersells it. It's:

  • A full publishing framework with nine editorial sections, reviews, a library, events, media, and games
  • 27 reader tools (text-to-speech, highlights, reading ruler, focus mode, reading list…) that no other platform offers
  • Pagefind search, Buttondown newsletter, Umami analytics, and Cusdis comments wired in
  • Fully customizable via a single config file and one CSS tokens file
  • $0 forever — no platform, no database, no lock-in

What it isn't

It's not a SaaS, not a hosted platform, not a no-code builder. You need to be comfortable editing Markdown files and pushing to Git. Everyone else should check out Ghost or Substack.

What's next

The roadmap covers what's coming. The docs cover what's here. If you want help getting set up, book a call — I offer launch packages starting at $999.

Thanks to everyone who contributed beta feedback, suggestions, and bug reports. Onward.

]]> Why your publication should live in Git 2026-04-10T00:00:00Z https://projectbroadsheet.com/blog/why-markdown-in-git/ The case for plain text, version control, and why the "export" feature on every SaaS should make you suspicious. Every publishing platform has an "Export" feature. That's not a gift — it's a confession.

It's the platform admitting, out loud, that your content is being kept somewhere you can't easily reach. The export button is an escape hatch you have to request, and the file you get back is never quite what you had. Metadata drops. Images rehosted. Custom formatting flattened.

Project Broadsheet takes the opposite stance. Your content is plain Markdown in a Git repository. There is no export, because there's nothing to export from — the files on your laptop are the files on your server.

What this unlocks

  • Version history, for free, forever. Every edit is a commit. Every deletion can be restored.
  • Portability as default. Move to a different static site generator? Copy the folder.
  • Collaboration that scales. Pull requests, code review, branch previews — all the tools software teams have used for twenty years.
  • No "export" feature needed. You already have everything.

The trade-off

Markdown in Git requires a small amount of technical literacy. If you've never used Git, there's a learning curve. Pages CMS gives you a browser-based editor if you prefer that workflow.

But here's the thing: the learning curve is a one-time cost. The platform lock-in of a SaaS is a tax you pay every month, forever.

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