I’m proud to introduce my newest product, PupperPost.

To me, blogging is one of the greatest gifts of the World Wide Web. From its earliest days, I got to know the stars in the technology industry through their blogs. I couldn’t possibly name all the great bloggers of the early 21st century, but they were formative to my thinking as I learned to become a software developer. It’s fair to say that I wouldn’t be the nerd I am today without those blogs.

And it turns out that I enjoy blogging too! Sharing my thoughts with the world, on my own domain, is hugely empowering.

The Story of PupperPost

Early last year, I was looking to get back into blogging. I had a personal blog that I was hosting myself using Hugo. It was an old version that had lain fallow for some years. I had forgotten how to access the admin interface, and I couldn’t find documentation that covered the old version. I had to give up on it! Those old blog posts aren’t gone, but they became quite inaccessible. I was super-frustrated, and I realized that frustration is a persistent theme when it comes to blogging.

So when I was faced with a choice to move my blog to a new host, I opted for the choice that I think every nerd has made at one point: I created my own.

To be clear, this was no idle choice. For me to engage in a project like this, with the fit and finish of a product available for sale, it had to tick a number of boxes.

First off, PupperPost is a native app. Every other blog system out there is a web-first platform. Wordpress, the most popular hosting platform in the world, is the default choice for millions of sites. Tragically, their focus has moved away from blogging, and now they spend their energy building whole sites with robust content management, layout tools, ecommerce capabilities and more. Not on blogging!

Wordpress, Hugo, Ghost, and all the rest (kindly documented by Manuel Moreale on this blog post!), have something in common: you have to go to a website, sign in and navigate some kind of UI. For me, native apps win, every day. Nothing beats the immediacy and availability of a native app. No login, no weird UIs, just the business of writing posts.

Secondly, it has to be drop-dead simple. I don’t want to manage my blog setup. No Docker images, no database configuration, no security updates. I just keep PupperPost running on my Mac. When I want to share a social post, I use the menu bar icon, write, and post. There’s no login, because I did that when I started the blog. I won’t ever have to do that again!

I truly believe that PupperPost is the easiest way to blog. Period.

Blogging is Important

With PupperPost, as with blogging in general, I want to take back my own content. When Twitter came along, blogs went into a long-term decline. Now that Twitter is fracturing, people are taking up blogging anew, and I’m making the bet that they’re done with sticking their best thoughts and feelings into someone else’s ad-revenue-generating farm.

With PupperPost, your content stays on your own domain (and you can point your own custom domain to your blog, so it’s really yours!). And importantly, you can export your data out of PupperPost anytime, so you can move to another blog system if you want.

But PupperPost is also made for modern blogging. In addition to your standard blog post like this one, it lets you make micro posts too. You know that type of post from social media: limited character count, links and images. And the best part: if you use Mastodon, you can connect your account and automatically cross-post your posts to Mastodon!

In this way, PupperPost is a tool for a social network as big as the World Wide Web! It’s the POSSE model for generating content: Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate it Everywhere. You can choose the best blog system for you, and I hope PupperPost can become that for many.

PupperPost Needs Your Support

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: PupperPost is the work of one person. Me! I’m an indie developer, and I want to make my living off PupperPost. For PupperPost to “win”, it needs to answer the needs of its customers. That’s where you come in! Here’s how you can help:

• Download PupperPost and give it a try!
• The second it turns you off, please tell me why!
• Tell your friends and family about PupperPost!

I’m dedicating myself to the development of this app. I’m planning to build my customer base one at a time. I’m going to be ultra-responsive to any feedback. And while it may not be there yet, PupperPost is going to be the best blogging app ever.

Thanks for reading! Let’s go!

P.S. This isn’t my first attempt to write a blog tool! Back in 2010, I wrote a Ruby gem that implemented a command-line blog manager called Shabng! If that sounds amusing, you can watch a demo that is still, magically, on Vimeo.