Life has finally calmed down for me again, and I'm back to working on Write.as and WriteFreely.
I'm spending this week catching up on my backlog and getting organized for the months ahead. Over the last few months, I've resolved to fully focus on everything I've built with Musing Studio — similar to how I poured everything into this work back in 2019. It's an exciting but challenging time for the web, and I want to make sure we continue to evolve with it.
As I'm getting settled again, I'll also be hanging out in the Remark.as Cafe chat room all week, starting from at least noon, Eastern Time. Stop by and chat with me and others in the community, if you're around!
Otherwise, keep an eye out for more progress and updates here!
Thoughts? Discuss...
I’m at a big turning point right now with a life change that came unexpectedly in November, and threw me off all the momentum I had with Write.as / WriteFreely in the fall.
Doing my best to get through it, and I appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding in the meantime.
#life
Thoughts? Discuss...
It’s been a productive month! Released WriteFreely v0.15.1, our sub.club integration, and free Write.as accounts. Free accounts have been especially nice — over just a couple days, daily signups are 4 times higher than what they were before, and we’ve seen more upgrades too.
I’m working on WriteFreely v0.16 now, with a ton of new features that people should enjoy. I’m hoping to have that out by November 9 — six years after our very first release. I also have a ton of updates planned for November on Write.as that I can’t wait to share with everyone.
Besides that, I’ve been posting more on the fediverse, Threads, Bluesky, and even LinkedIn (😬) to get the word out more. We’ve had a long period of slow progress, and now I want to start ramping up again.
#WriteFreely #Writeas #business #updates #progress
Thoughts? Discuss...
A lot of dev planning today, thinking about the next two WriteFreely releases. As I mentioned on @dev@musing.studio, the goal is to basically bring WF into parity with Write.as, including support for photos, which is a long-request feature.
I’m excited for these next updates, as they’ll really move the product forward and give more people access to everything we’ve built here. You can see what’s next for WF (and beyond) on our project tracker.
#WriteFreely #WriteFreelyDev #dev
Thoughts? Discuss...
Just finished up a brand new integration with sub.club, and here it is in action! Paid subscribers can read on for more.
I’ve been much more organized and focused over the last several weeks. Trying to stay on top of emails and forum posts; got the latest WriteFreely release out this weekend; supported the launch of the Social Web Foundation; working on a new Write.as integration; and finishing up another Write.as change, also announcing this week.
It’s nice to feel on top of things again, and I’m excited for what’s coming down the line for the rest of the year. Maybe oddly, fall and winter feel like the best time to buckle down and work.
#WriteFreely #Writeas #life
Thoughts? Discuss...
Updating some servers today that haven’t been touched in a while. This includes getting our Phabricator issue tracker back online after a bad upgrade knocked it out. I’m also trying to migrate our Musing Studio instance of Mastodon onto our current domain. So far so good, but we’ll see how the rest goes.
Earlier, I did more cleanup from last month’s fraud attacks. We took a big financial hit from that last month, so I’m tightening things up personally to weather it all.
It’s been rainy in New York all week, but outside of some dampened plans, I’ve enjoyed it. Yesterday it was a beautiful 68°F outside, so I took a walk around the neighborhood and sat outside for a beer near the park, watching the people go by. It felt like fall, and got me excited for the coming season.
I’ve fallen behind on a lot of work and life things, but overall this week has been pretty productive. I’ll feel much more at peace once I take care of (most) everything.
Thoughts? Discuss...
Had some coffee this morning and implemented a proof-of-concept search for Write.as. Still would need persistence, indexing multiple blogs, and the whole UI — but I showed it was possible, at least.
If I end up finishing this feature, I imagine it working on both individual blogs and across Read Write.as. The goal would be to make it easier to find old posts (especially while composing new ones or going through archives), and to help people find writers they’re interested in on Read Write.as.
We’ll see if it comes to fruition in the future. For now, back to daily emails and so on.
#search #writeas #writeasdev #today
Thoughts? Discuss...
This month, we’ve seen waves of attacks by (what appear to be) bots testing stolen credit card numbers on the service. It started around the 4th, which we were able to stop relatively easy. The attackers gave up for a bit, then picked it up again this past Sunday with new tactics that caused some intermittent downtime.
Dealing with this has occupied most of my week, as we close / open registrations, and keep up with the attackers’ shifting tactics. But with the work I’ll be finishing up this weekend, the service should be much more resilient towards these types of attacks.
Thoughts? Discuss...
Some priorities for new Write.as development at the moment:
Better fediverse integration. It’s time to make the platform more social, and of course we’ll do it with ActivityPub. ”Likes” you get from the fediverse show up on Write.as now (I still need to announce this), and replies will be next.
Importing posts. Other publishing platforms are doing some bad things right now, and I see many people looking for alternatives like Write.as. We’ll start with importing from Substack, then move on to support for other platforms.
Draft posts. Writers have had to work around the shortcomings of Anonymous posts here (called “Drafts” on WriteFreely) for too long, so it’s time to implement true drafts, with the ability to see posts and schedule them before finally publishing. This will also support migration from other platforms, and retain any imported drafts.
#fediverse #ActivityPub #WriteAs #WriteFreely #writeasdev
Thoughts? Discuss...
