As extra of our lives transfer on-line, we develop into depending on massive providers with hundreds of thousands (or billions) of customers to speak with one another. Although we have a tendency to note issues solely when these platforms change a coverage, erect a paywall, or endure an information breach, we will usually really feel how these mass-broadcast platforms do not at all times have our greatest pursuits in thoughts and infrequently do not “connect” us within the methods they purport to.
However, over the previous few years, we have additionally seen a renaissance of small, close-knit on-line communities. New protocols for constructing federated social networks, like ActivityPub, are seeing extra use, popularized by open supply platforms like Mastodon. People nonetheless collect on boards to debate their pursuits with like-minded individuals. And even on the big, centralized providers, many individuals use “group” options to have extra intimate conversations than they might by sending their newest standing replace to a large swath of unrelated individuals.
In the running a blog world, we have additionally seen platforms like Medium and Tumblr develop into extra widespread, partially due to the networks they provide. With these massive platforms, every weblog is not an “island,” however a part of an enormous group. Yet, like some other closed-source, centralized service, in the event that they make a change that does not profit their customers, we’re compelled to seek out one other platform. That’s why I constructed WriteFreely.
WriteFreely is an open supply, federated running a blog platform. Being open supply means you may host it your self and modify it to suit your wants. Being federated means it might probably work together with different nodes within the ActivityPub-powered Fediverse, permitting you to hitch and kind bigger networks from smaller, extra intimate communities. If you begin your individual WriteFreely group, you may set the tone and guidelines for it, attracting different like-minded individuals and constructing the sort of gathering you wish to see on-line, as an alternative of counting on bigger providers to do that for you.
There are many causes you may wish to begin your individual group. You may create one for your loved ones, giving dad and mom and siblings particular person blogs as an alternative of utilizing Facebook to share information with one another. With the built-in Reader, everybody’s updates will be shared and browse in a single stream on the positioning.
If you already run a Mastodon occasion, you may complement it with a long-form running a blog web site. Then, because of its capability to talk ActivityPub, customers in your Mastodon occasion and the broader Fediverse can observe blogs in your WriteFreely occasion and obtain posts instantly of their social feed, the place they’ll increase or “favorite” posts they get pleasure from.
You may additionally begin a group in your firm or group to share data amongst workers or with the skin world. WriteFreely lets you configure how open your group is, so it is helpful even for fully non-public conditions the place you won’t need your blogs to connect with the broader world.
These are all methods WriteFreely is already getting used immediately.
To begin a group, you may want a digital non-public server (VPS), some expertise with the command line, and a bit of time. Installation entails downloading the most recent compiled launch to your server, configuring the appliance, and making it accessible to the skin world.
WriteFreely’s Getting Started guide walks you thru the set up course of. Since it was constructed with Go (golang), a lot of the software is contained in a single executable. No exterior dependencies are wanted—you may even retailer all of your knowledge in an SQLite database, because of the embedded performance.
Over the previous a number of months, we have heard of only a few issues with set up, even from less-experienced customers. Many of these extra aware of DevOps have stated that the method was really gratifying.
But for many who both do not know the way (or do not want) to self-host, two providers make it painless: WriteFreely.host for beginning a group, and Write.as for publishing particular person blogs. Both providers run on WriteFreely, and all income goes towards the individuals growing the challenge to make it sustainable for the long-term.
Overall, I wish to see extra individuals expressing themselves on-line, and particularly doing it in additional human ways in which join us—enabling us to get pleasure from a number of the Web’s unique guarantees. I hope to perform this with WriteFreely, so please let me know what you think alongside the way in which!
