Today's Deep-Dive: WriteFreely

Welcome to the Deep Dive, the show that, well, we extract the essential knowledge

from some pretty dense source material to give you a shortcut to being genuinely

well informed.

Before we jump in today, I just want to give a quick shout out to our supporter for

this Deep Dive, Safe Server. If you're looking at modern software, maybe self-hosting

solutions or just trying to speed up your digital transformation, Safe Server is

really the partner you need.

Yeah, they're great. They actively support hosting for simple open source software,

just like the platform we're about to get into today.

Exactly. You can find out more at www.safeserver.de.

Okay, so today we are tackling a problem that I think everyone feels just

information overload. If you're a writer, and especially if you're a beginner

trying to publish anything online, you are just hit with this huge, noisy, complex

digital world.

Oh, it's the digital equivalent of trying to have a quiet conversation in a packed

arena. Yeah, it really is. The platform becomes the enemy of the writing process.

It does. And you've got these systems that need multiple dependencies, giant

databases and interfaces that are, you know, constantly trying to distract you.

All the clicks, the likes, the notifications. I see so many new writers just give

up because the technical or even the social barrier feels way too high.

Absolutely. So our mission today is to do a deep dive into write freely.

It's a platform that promises this really radical back to basics approach.

We've gone through the source material, the code philosophies, the feature sets,

and we're going to unpack it for you.

The beginner. We want to show you what makes this platform so appealing, why its

technical side is so simple for deployment and how it still connects you to the

wider digital world.

Right. And let's start with the user experience, because that is, I think, write

freely is absolute core philosophy.

The sources just make it so clear. This platform is fundamentally made for writing.

And when they say that, they really mean they've stripped everything away.

I mean, if you look at the feature list, what's missing is almost more important

than what's there.

Right. It is. Yeah. You won't find a newsfeed.

You won't find aggressive notifications, follower accounts or any of those features

that kind of push you toward validation.

Like the likes or the claps.

Exactly. It's a very purposeful defense against the attention economy.

So it's about removing performance pressure.

Totally. You log in and you're just faced with the editor.

That's it. The whole experience is designed to be plain, clean, and this is super

important.

Autosaving. Oh, that's huge.

It removes that anxiety of losing your work and it just keeps your focus completely

on the text you're creating.

OK. I think we need to quickly touch on the backbone of that editor, which is Markdown.

Because if you're a beginner, you might hear that term and think it means complex

code.

Right. And it's actually the opposite.

It's a huge part of why the platform works so well.

So can you break down why Markdown is like the perfect tool for this kind of

digital minimalism?

Of course. Think of Markdown as a future proof, totally universal language for just

formatting text.

So instead of clicking a Talics button on some big chunky toolbar, which behind the

scenes, inserts a bunch of

complex hitting code, you just wrap your word in asterisks.

Simple. So simple.

And instead of picking heading one from a drop down menu, you just use a single

hash symbol.

So the benefit here is twofold.

Then first, your hands stay on the keyboard.

So you stay in the flow, stay in the flow.

And second, that Markdown translates into incredibly clean, simple HTML when it's

published.

This keeps the technical side of things really low.

Pages load instantly and the reader gets this pure, unpolluted reading experience.

Where the words are front and center.

Exactly.

It's elegant simplicity.

Okay.

So clean experience for the writer, clean experience for the reader.

But this brings us to what is traditionally the biggest hurdle for beginners.

Self-hosting.

Yeah.

Dependency hell.

Dependency hell.

That moment you decide you want to own your digital space and suddenly you need

specific

versions of PHP, a web server, a complex database setup.

The sources suggest write freely just, sidesteps all of that.

It absolutely does.

And this is where the technical choices are, I think, revolutionary for a beginner.

Write freely is described as light and easy to install because of its underlying

tech.

It's written in Go or Golang.

We hear about Go all the time in modern infrastructure.

But what does that actually mean for someone trying to get this software up and

running?

So Go is built for efficiency and speed.

But the key benefit for you, the beginner host, is how it's packaged.

Write freely deploys as a static binary.

A static binary.

OK, what's that?

Think of it like a complete self-contained application file.

It's like a perfectly packed suitcase.

It has everything it needs inside that one file to run.

Oh, wow.

Compare that to, say, a classic WordPress install where you have to go shopping for

all the parts, right?

You install PHP, you configure a web server like Apache or Nginx.

Then you set up a MySQL database separately.

Right. It's a whole checklist.

It is. With write freely, you download one small file and it's supporting assets.

The sources are really clear on this.

No other dependencies required to get started.

That is, that's genuinely shocking simplicity.

So the process isn't installing and configuring all these different layers of

software.

It's just download, run, and you're online.

Precisely. And that's why it's so easy on your server.

The resources it needs are so minimal.

A really good example from the sources is that it can run comfortably on a tiny,

low powered device like a Raspberry Pi.

That's incredible.

That just lowers the bar for self-hosting so much.

You don't need some expensive dedicated server just to run a blog.

Not at all.

Yeah.

And for database management, which is another huge pain point for beginners, they

minimize that too.

For the quickest start, it has built in support for SchoolLite.

So the whole database is just one file on your system.

Just one file.

You don't have to manage a complex SQL server.

Now, if your community grows a lot over time, you do have the option to migrate to

something bigger like MySchool or PostgreSQL later.

But that initial setup is totally friction-free.

And we know the simplicity isn't fragile.

The sources call it mature and stable.

And they point out that this exact curd base has powered over 550,000 blogs on

write.s.

Which is their hosted service, yeah.

Over the last decade, that's a pretty robust proof of concept.

Plus, it's fully open source.

Stability and accessibility all covered.

Great.

So we've established it's excellent for a single writer who wants to self-host

easily.

But the sources also say you can write together and build a community.

How does it do that if it intentionally lacks all those social features?

It seems like a contradiction.

It is a bit of a contradiction, but it solves it by not trying to replicate the

centralized social web we all know.

Instead, it connects to the decentralized web.

And this is the power of Activity Pub or AP.

Ah, Activity Pub.

So that's the engine behind the Fediverse things like Mastodon.

Can you break down what that means for a write freely blog?

Like, how does it talk to everything else?

OK, so when you enable Activity Pub on your write freely blog, you're basically

just telling your server to speak the same language as every other federated

server out there. We call this federation.

And your blog post becomes portable across that whole network.

Exactly. So in practice, if someone is on Mastodon, they don't have to go

visit your URL every day or even sign up for your specific write freely

instance. They can just follow your blog's handle right from their Mastodon account.

So their feed just includes your new blog post automatically right alongside their

friends short posts and pictures.

That's it. They can bookmark it. They can share it with their followers and they

can interact with your content without ever leaving their preferred platform.

That transforms your blog from this static website on an island into a dynamic

part of the decentralized social web.

It's a huge advantage for building an audience, especially for a beginner.

Yeah, because you're not building an audience from scratch on a new network.

You're tapping into an existing ecosystem, an ecosystem of millions of people who

are already invested in this kind of content.

But what if I want to build a community on my own server and I want to bring in

writers from, say, another platform I'm already part of?

It supports that too with Oath 2.0.

That's just the standard way to let users from other platforms, maybe a company

intranet or another social group, smoothly join your write freely instance

without any friction.

It's great for focused internal writing communities as well.

OK, so that's Connectivity Square.

We've done the writing, the deployment, the networking.

Let's wrap up with the practical features and the sort of ethical stance that the

sources highlight. I know privacy is a big one.

It is the defining ethical stance.

The philosophy is clearly privacy by default.

The software is just engineered to collect the absolute minimum amount of data.

And it never publicizes more than you consent to, right?

Never. In an era where every single click and engagement is tracked and monetized

by these giant platforms, that commitment is just vital for building trust.

That's very reassuring. I'm also curious about identity management.

You know, writers often use pen names or want different spaces for different

topics. Yeah. And this is a really clever feature for managing your writing life.

A single account lets you seamlessly create multiple blogs.

So you could have your main professional blog, a separate blog for a niche hobby,

and maybe an anonymous pen name for some creative work. And write freely,

make sure those aren't publicly linked unless you want them to be. Correct.

They operate independently.

It gives the writer this really granular control over their public persona.

So efficient organization without giving up privacy.

And what about organizing posts within a blog? Are there complex menus for that?

Nope, no complex menus. Stick into the minimalism.

Organization is really intuitive. You just categorize articles using simple

hashtags.

Familiar to anyone on social media. Very familiar, but without the clutter.

And if you need a classic webpage, like an about page, you don't need a separate

tool.

You just write a regular post and then you pin it to your blog.

And it becomes a permanent static page. Instantly.

Plus you can manage drafts and publish to all those multiple blogs we just talked

about all from one central place.

That's a lot of functionality with very little complexity. And lastly,

what about global accessibility? Is this just for English speakers? Not at all.

The sources point out that it's remarkably international.

The blog elements are localized in over 20 languages and crucially,

it has first-class support for non-Latin and right to left or RTL script languages.

So it's not just a basic translation. It's baked into the design. It is,

which makes it a genuinely global accessible writing environment.

That really wraps up an impressive package that a distraction-free

environment built on markdown,

incredibly easy deployment with that go static binary,

decentralized reach through activity pub,

and a really strong ethical stance on privacy.

So for you, the listener, the beginner,

who's maybe ready to take that leap into self-publishing,

the choice is pretty clear.

You can self-host using that static binary for a minimal setup,

or you can choose the managed hosting path via write.s.

And choosing the managed service is a great option because it directly funds the

ongoing development of this amazing open source software.

Right. So here's our final thought for you takeaway.

In a digital economy that is just dominated by platforms that prioritize

feature bloat, notifications, and engagement metrics,

what inherent value are you placing on the act of digital minimalism?

Is choosing a simple, stable platform like Write Freely One focused purely on

clean content delivery, a revolutionary act of self-possession in itself?

It's a great question to think about.

A great question to ponder as you define your own digital home.

And remember, whether you're supporting open source software or you're looking

for robust infrastructure for your transformation, check out our supporter,

Safe Server.

You can find all the info you need at www.safeserver.de.

We'll see you next time.

We'll see you next time.