Moving to Pagecord

A long time ago, I used an app called Posterous for this blog. Posterous' main feature was the ability to post directly via email, skipping the inconvenience of logins and custom editors and reducing posting friction.

Ever since it was shut down, I've wished to replicate that simplicity in my publishing. I've tried various blogging platforms; started writing my own apps; and put together solutions via tools like Zapier - but nothing felt quite as elegant and efficient as Posterous.

Most recently I've been using 11ty to power this site, but - even though I spend most of my working time in a code editor - I've never found using Zed or VSCode or Vim, or any code editor, a good place for writing.

Coupled with the fact I would procrastinate by running npm updates, wrangling with JavaScript, and trying out the latest version of [insert any framework/tool/package here] to get my site "just right", it has meant that I've always spent more time updating the code rather than the content.

I've always found myself settling back to a static site generator, and the hope that I'll "just write more". That's often not the case though.

So I've been been interested to see the  the development of Pagecord, and light but increasingly-powerful blogging platform written by Olly Headey.

(As an aside, Olly was one of the co-founders of FreeAgent - the bookkeeping software I've used since day one of my business, and wouldn't be without 🙏)

Back to Email

Like Posterous, Pagecord is based on the same idea of posting via email. I love this, and the recently released API - coupled with Olly's fast responses to feedback and adding or tweaking features - has given me the confidence to finally take the plunge and migrate this blog.

I'm also happy knowing that the blog is running on a Rails app again, which I'm far more familiar with!

Migrating Content

To quickly migrate the content over, I put together a simple pagecord-cli tool to import my markdown posts and do some gsub-bing to remap asset URLs.

I've also included a feature in the CLI tool can export my content back to markdown+yaml to ensure data portability.

Future

I really like Pagecord, and Olly has done an amazing job. Pagecord is open source, although contributions are currently closed.

However, one element I'm hoping to add are thumbnail images for my moments posts, rather than the current list of titles.

But, more than anything, it's great to support a great, independent blogging app. I hope that I'll be able to settle my blog and finally get back into the writing habit unencumbered by package updates, CSS tweaks, breaking changes and specs, and WYSIWYG editors.

PS. Yes - this post was written and sent via email 🎉