It took a little poking to get it displaying right, but luckily we already had much of the backend work done with our Markdown API. It seems to work pretty well! I just need to test a few more things, and then it’ll go live on Write.as. After some real-world testing, we’ll bring it over to WriteFreely, too.

#dev #WriteAs #WriteFreely #WriteFreelyDev

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I made some changes to how our Articles go out to the fediverse, which I’ll announce tomorrow. This post is partly a little test to see how it looks! But should be an improvement, especially on Mastodon.

Finally, I started experimenting with something new around monetizing Write.as blogs. For now, it’s super duper secret. But it was really easy to integrate and looks pretty slick! So look forward to trying it out live on the site soon and seeing what else we can do with it.

#daily #updates #WriteAs #fediverse

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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

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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

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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

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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

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We found a very critical issue with our spam detection system that led to many people being marked as abusive users if they had a gmail address on their account. It seems to have started around June 24.

Truly sorry to everyone who's been affected by this.

— Write.as (@writeas__) July 22, 2022

I thought the drop-off in daily new users (about 80%) was due to spammers slowing their usual onslaught, but it turns out it was mostly this issue. I'll be keeping a better eye on that in the future.

#writeas

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For example, while taking another pass on the design of a new “categories” system for Write.as, I started asking myself the fundamental questions: why even add this at all? Does it add anything, besides satisfying a requirement for someone? What’s the galaxy-brain view on a feature like this?

At first thought, categories seem superfluous to me, personally. I don’t need or really want them — I hear “categories” and think “management.” Blech, no thank you. But some larger customers need it, and it will help things behind the scenes.

Still the feature didn’t make sense until I figured out the verb of it all. So on Write.as, categories won’t be about categorizing — putting things in constrained little boxes, for yourself and your readers, giving you new work to keep you busy and distracted from doing the real work (writing).

Instead, categories are the next, more orderly, stage of tagging.

For most writers, you might start tagging your posts only when you want to keep things organized. But it’s optional! You don’t have to organize anything if you don’t want to, and I love that.

But if you do, I feel like tagging is an organic growth from the content. The type of writers I want to build for don’t start a blog with a perfect, unchanging list of topics to write about. They write to explore, and then common themes arise from the writing itself.

So, categories are more like these organic themes or topics that arise from your writing. They solidify and bring more order to the previous stage, tagging — or they can be explicitly created if you feel the need. But first and foremost, categories aren’t things, but merely processes that are born out of your work.

#categories #design #product #writeas

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My usual solution is opening multiple Write.as tabs, but that keeps the anxiety high. If I ever accidentally close a tab before publishing, one draft gets lost, since the editor only ever saves to a single “latest” draft.

#writeas

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#design #writeas

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