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WriteFreely

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What is WriteFreely?

WriteFreely strips blogging back to the writing itself: an auto-saving editor, plain pages that put the words first, and no likes, claps or notification feeds. It suits a single company blog as well as a shared space for a team or a community of writers, and it connects to the wider web through ActivityPub so posts reach readers on Mastodon.

WriteFreely is a minimalist publishing platform for blogs, company writing and writing communities. Writers get an auto-saving Markdown editor and simple, fast-loading pages, while readers can follow blogs from Mastodon and other ActivityPub services or subscribe by email. It runs as a single Go program with SQLite or MySQL.

Core capabilities

  • Write in a distraction-free, auto-saving Markdown editor and publish clean, readable pages.
  • Let readers follow your blog from Mastodon and other ActivityPub apps, or subscribe by email.
  • Host one blog or a whole team of writers, with invites, private instances and moderation tools.

Writing, organising and reaching readers

Posts are written in Markdown in an auto-saving editor and can be kept as drafts before publishing. Hashtags group posts, and pinned posts become static pages such as an About page. Each blog can be public, unlisted, password-protected or private, and one account can run several blogs under different pen names without linking them publicly. With email configured, readers can subscribe to a blog by email. Interface text is translated into more than 20 languages, including right-to-left scripts.

  • Markdown
  • Blog visibility
  • Email subscriptions
  • Multilingual

From one blog to a writing community

A multi-user instance can open registration, require invites from admins or users, or close sign-ups entirely. Members can sign in through OAuth providers such as GitLab, Gitea, Slack or a generic OAuth server. A private mode limits all reading to signed-in members, which fits internal knowledge sharing. Admins can silence accounts, delete spam users in bulk from the command line and set limits such as the number of blogs per account. Federation with Mastodon and other ActivityPub software can be switched on or off.

  • Multi-user
  • OAuth
  • ActivityPub
  • Moderation

Running it yourself and the licence

WriteFreely ships as a single binary for the platforms Go supports, with built-in SQLite or a MySQL or MariaDB database. Setup is a guided config command, a key generation step and a systemd service, either serving HTTPS on its own or behind nginx. It runs on small hardware such as a Raspberry Pi. The code is AGPL-3.0 with no paid edition; Write.as, run by the same team, offers managed hosting for those who prefer not to self-host.

  • Self-hosted
  • Go
  • SQLite
  • AGPL-3.0

Where it fits

Use cases

  1. 01

    Start a company blog in an afternoon

    Download the release for your server, run writefreely config start and choose single-user mode with SQLite. Add your domain behind nginx or the built-in HTTPS server, then customise the look with custom CSS.

  2. 02

    Share knowledge inside the organisation

    Set the instance to private so only signed-in members can read posts, and connect your existing login through OAuth. Staff can each keep a blog, tag posts with hashtags and pin key posts as static pages.

  3. 03

    Grow an audience beyond your own site

    Turn on federation so people on Mastodon can follow, share and bookmark new posts. Configure SMTP or Mailgun in the email settings so readers can also subscribe to a blog by email.