How We Can Fixed Publishing Online
Or “Explaining the first step in my evil plan to make writing easier”
For the past few weeks, I’ve been busy working on what I thought would be the next-gen solution for web publishing. A little application called Bottle. It’s a minuscule website engine stuffed into a single file. You can use it to create and host a blog right from your laptop. It’s still young, and requires a lot of work (namely, you only have access to one theme right now and it’s not even very good). But, these are temporary issues that should be fixed by the end of the year. If you’re technically savvy, don’t care for platforms, and want a fast blog in under a minute, please give Bottle a try. If you hate it, it’s very easy to uninstall. And you can always email me if you have any questions or complaints.
Bottle means more to me than just another side project though. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been trying to figure out a better way to write on the web. There are many problems to solve. Monetization, distribution, community, and styling to gaze over a few. But the one I’m trying to solve first is publishing. Publishing on the web is hard. Actually owning your content, controlling where it lives, who gets to see it, and its price requires years of technical experience. Most writers don’t want to deal with that. They want to write! That’s why you’re reading this on a platform. Somebody else did all the work learning how make websites, found a bunch of likeminded people, and now makes money off all the writers who don’t know how to run their own newsletter. There’s nothing wrong with that. If our society scoffed at specialization we’d all be preparing for another day in the fields.
It is troubling that at any time you or I could be eradicated from this platform. We don’t have rights here. We’re customers, just like our readers. And no business should be forced to serve someone who doesn’t pay. I’m fine with that. The real problem is the technical knowledge gap. I want to make Bottle so friendly and easy to use anyone who knows how to type on their keyboard can publish a website. Presently, Bottle doesn’t achieve that. You need to know how to work a terminal, write Markdown, and YAML. How to get a Let’s Encrypt certificate and set up NGINX as a reverse proxy—see, your eyes already glazed over. It’s a complicated problem. But it doesn’t have to be.
What if Bottle did all that stuff for you? You could download the program, design your perfect publication, and pay $10/month to own your work forever. That’s it. The program on your machine styles, spell-checks, manages, and updates itself. The only reason you have to pay is because server’s cost money. If you have your own machine Bottle would work there too. Then it’d be free as in beer. If you do pay, the company behind Bottle would handle all the technical requirements for your site, but under a strict and fair contract. The company could not take down your content unless you were posting something illegal or stopped paying. This isn’t a perfect solution. I basically described any number of blogging services, but it’s a start. There are other ways to publish on the internet most technical writers might not even know about. It all depends on what you’re willing to sacrifice.
The Interplanetary File System is a peer to peer file sharing network built on Web3. If you upload a file, it breaks it up into small chunks, fingerprints each chunk based on the information it contains, and distributes them across a wide network of peers under a common unique identifier. The chunks are not mutable, and cannot be deleted from the network. Changes made to the files act like iterations on a Google Doc. Everyone can still see the old version, making your posts highly-resistant to illicit tampering. The only issue is that since it’s part of Web3 using it is ridiculously complicated.
There are tools to make publishing easy, and most people could use IPFS as a Google Drive replacement. But not many good tools exists to make IPFS a publishing platform. IPFS is its own protocol. You can’t just access your files from Chrome. That’s where Bottle comes in. You could download it, use it to sync your writing and little configuration file, update and post for free to IPFS, and then Bottle would take all the unique identifiers, get the most recent version of your posts, and build/deploy a production ready blog.
l haven’t tested this idea yet. I actually just came up with it right now. But, I’m already sold. Writers wouldn’t care that they couldn’t delete a post, or that previous, misprints, corrections, and versions would be public forever, right? Maybe it’s not about what writers want. My earliest posts on this newsletter were all about publications deceiving its reader’s.
The internet has removed the unquestionable record of print. Perhaps, in exchange for free writing authors would have to take responsibility for what they wrote.
I’m actually writing this post because I woke up humbled. After a month of working on Bottle in my free time I discovered that Hugo, a popular static site generator was built in near-identical manner to Bottle. Hugo’s huge in the static site space. It’s one of the biggest open source publishing tools in use today. Realizing it would always outshine Bottle left me feeling like Icarus’ during his last epiphany.
Writing has always held a hallowed place in my heart. It’s the tool I use to express myself, process difficult situations, heal, and share. I know for many of you it does the same. By making writing more accessible in our digital age and stripping the last remnants of gatekeeper’s powers we can truly give every person with an internet connection the unilateral right to free expression. It’s completing what the first scribe started millennia ago.
If you’re interested in helping Bottle, or just talking publishing head down to the comments. I’ll be in and out all day to answer any questions or discuss writing in general.
I hope your day is excellent,
Tristan Isham