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Pagecord - a blogging platform

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It seems like every week there is a new blogging platform which piques my interest.  The latest one is Pagecord, launched in March 2024 by Olly.  

example screen shots from pagecord website

Reading through the product blog shows how it has evolved over a year or so, to the product it is today.

I’d describe it as a simple, focused, clean and friendly blogging tool.  If you’re looking for something to get the words on the page efficiently, and cleanly, this could be for you.

It has all the usual features you would expect:

Posts

This is the collection of your blog articles, in date order.  As well as a title and content, it has:

Importantly, you can have draft posts.  This is a great feature when you are preparing, perhaps in advance, some posts but are not quite ready to publish.

Setting the publication date/time to the future will auto publish the post at the time — a great feature too.

When writing a post, there are basic formatting tools for all the usual options: Bold, Italics, lists, etc. 

Pages

These are typically used for content such as your About, or Contact Me style pages.  They have the same formatting options as Posts, and can optionally be added to the navigation space at the top right of every page.  They appear ⁠to be sorted alphabetic, so you can’t adjust the order.  The top-right gets a bit congested on a mobile screen.

Settings

Some great little features in here.  I was especially pleased to see some control over search engine indexing, as well as verification for Google and the Fediverse.  

You can export all of your blog posts, which is great to protect your data sovereignty, and allow you to move your content elsewhere if needed. Exports are delivered as a zip file with individual html files -- great for stand-alone pages, more challenging for importing to another platform. There's no import option if moving into Pagecord.

The Appearance section has a few tweaks to change layout and colour, but on the whole your blog will follow a strict set of typography rules, set by Pagecord.

Example layouts

example layouts

Standout features

Pagecord has one major standout feature which will appeal to many: write your blog post in an email.

What a revelation!  You are assigned a unique email address for your blog.  Send in an email with a Subject (header) and body and your blog post is published.  Genius.

I can see this appealing to many who might want to blog on the go (phone/pad), or those who don't want the fuss of a web page with a rich-text editor.

This is not even a premium feature — it’s in the free version!

Also, for me, major kudos as Pagecord is made in Scotland (cue the bagpipes, haha — no, we do not all play or like them in Scotland)

Limitations

Overall, your design is enforced by Pagecord — Beyond some basic appearance settings around a few themes, width, and three font options, you are limited in your actual post/page formatting.  No varying sizes for headings (you have large or smaller only). No text colouring.

It would be nice to see Pagecord support Markdown, which for many bloggers is a great way to focus on typing the content, rather than clicking around with a formatting toolbar.  Perhaps an option in setting to jump between Rich Text or Markdown?

Cost

At the time of writing, there are two options. Free, or premium.

The free version gives you most features, with premium adding the ability to:

Premium is very generously priced at $29 (£22 uk) per year (no added sales tax).  An absolute bargain in my opinion.

Overall Verdict

All credit to Olly for a well thought-out service.  A beautifully compact, exquisitely easy to use blogging platform. 

If your focus is on the content, this is a great one for you.  Those who need a little more sexy will find it frustrating with limited customisation.

If I were starting out, this is a great destination to blog.

Leave a Comment; Reply via the Fediverse; or send a message if you have replied with your own blog post and I will mention it here.

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