August 15th, 2024

WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space on the web

WriteFreely is an open-source blogging platform that offers a minimalist, distraction-free writing experience, easy installation on low-resource servers, and supports community building through ActivityPub, powering over 450,000 blogs.

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WriteFreely: An open source platform for building a writing space on the web

WriteFreely is an open-source platform designed for creating a writing space on the web, emphasizing a minimalist approach to blogging. It features a fast, auto-saving editor that allows users to quickly jot down and publish their thoughts without distractions from notifications or social media interactions. The platform is lightweight and easy to install, requiring only the download of a binary file to set up a site, making it suitable for various server environments, including low-resource devices like Raspberry Pi. WriteFreely supports community building by enabling users to host their own writing communities and interact with the decentralized social web through ActivityPub, allowing for content sharing across platforms like Mastodon and Pleroma. Over the past eight years, WriteFreely has powered more than 450,000 blogs, showcasing its reliability and stability.

- WriteFreely is an open-source blogging platform focused on a distraction-free writing experience.

- It allows easy installation and runs efficiently on low-resource servers.

- The platform supports community building and interaction through ActivityPub.

- WriteFreely has a proven track record, powering over 450,000 blogs.

- It emphasizes a minimalist design, avoiding unnecessary features like notifications and likes.

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By @xd1936 - 8 months
From what I understand, Mastodon is to Twitter as WriteFreely is to WordPress.com/Medium/Blogger/etc. Fediverse-aware, open-source, with a flagship SaaS hosted instance available at https://write.as. If microblogging hadn't fried my brain and I was interested in spinning up a longform blog, this is the software I would choose.
By @system7rocks - 8 months
I used WriteFreely for a while. I loved its simplicity. It attracted a fascinating set of writers too.

But the price kept going up, updates were slow, and I think the project lacks some focus. I switched to OMG.LOL. I want a blog that is pretty constrained and forces me to make decisions. And keeps things pretty cheap.

By @RistrettoMike - 8 months
I tried WriteFreely (and some of their other stuff) a year or so ago, but found it to be a little too limited for what I was trying to achieve with my personal sites (as a layman/non-web-dev). Ended up using https://Blot.im/ very happily, with my photosite being the personal example I've put the most time into: https://ristrettoshots.com/

Edit pages mostly in regular markdown (+ a few simple Blot-specific tags), drop some images into a Dropbox folder, done. Site built. :)

By @cyberax - 8 months
I tried WriteFreely, I really tried. I even wrote a bi-directional synchronizer for it, so you can write locally in Obsidian and sync posts to Write.as: https://github.com/Cyberax/writeas-sync

But I gave up on it. Sorry. It's not a viable project.

It's backed by a one-man team, and so the support is unresponsive. The API is bad, and they impose ridiculously low rate limits. Like, less than 0.1 request per second. I understand the need to protect against bots, but hey, Cloudflare exists, and I'm paying for a subscription.

I then tried to self-host it. There is no official Docker support, but I cobbled it up. It works ok-ish, but the open source version is NOT the same as the one running on Write.as! For example, there is no support for drag&drop image uploads.

I then looked at the source code, and it's just a mess. There is no layering, the view makes direct requests to the database, and there is very little customization potential. For example, you can't even insert a script reference at the bottom of the page, without patching the source code.

By @vouaobrasil - 8 months
Looks interesting but it won't work on many shared servers on which the only option is PHP/SQL due to it being written in Go.
By @zamubafoo - 8 months
I use this in my homelab for drafting long form thoughts. It's nice since it feels more ephemeral than making a page in a wiki or making a page that gets rendered and hosted statically.

I used to run Ghost for this, but at some point the pervasive push to use Ghost's paid features for an internally hosted blog irked me enough to rip it out.

By @davidblue - 8 months
Love to see it! (Thanks again, Studio of Musings, for [saving my life](https://write.as/community/chat-with-david-blue).)
By @yencabulator - 8 months
By @IshKebab - 8 months
Can you paste images into the editor?
By @flusteredBias - 8 months
How does this compare to bearblog