It’s hard to keep up with all the new blogging platforms that are cropping up every single week – my inbox is full of new examples and new apps that many of you suggest that we cover.
I’ll admit that many of the submissions are not entirely good – it’s not that they aren’t worth a post but it’s that they don’t seem to push the envelope further down the blogging timeline in terms of usability, design, and feature sets.
Or, sometimes, it’s just not as much of a philosophical shift as one would hope to find as “blogging” these days is an old trick, so to speak. Maybe that’s why this one caught my attention:
Created by Drew Wilson & Sam Soffes it’s a blogging system that is definitely easy to use and especially easy to sign-up. Hit that button, put a few pieces of info in, and get started.
So, what’s the catch? Why did they create it?
We wanted to blog. We wanted our blogs to be our own, not mixed with others in yet another social blogging platform. So we searched for a service to get setup and straight to the writing process quickly and without the need to customize a template design in order to have a blog that would look good on all devices, and that would be our own. It simply didn’t exist, so we built Roon.
Roon is for writing. The Web, iOS and Mac apps are all focused on the writing experience rather than blog features.
Doesn’t sound altogether different than a few other blogging applications that we’ve showcased, right? Check out the publishing interface:
You’ve got a blank canvas that fades when you start writing. You’ve got a few options for text styling at the bottom. Intuitive, fast, and simple. Featured image at the top.
I threw something together and it was beautiful:
Which turned into this:
You can see it live here.
Wow, that is pretty. Very similar to Medium but also a bit different as well. For example, you can share the post but you can’t comment directly – you can comment via Twitter:
I love this idea. It allows commenting (unlike Tumblr) but not in the traditional sense, allowing engagement in a social platform that I use consistently. Dang it, this is what I was looking for in a recent update to my own personal blog as I was considering forsaking commenting altogether and going the route of Twitter alone.
It’s easy to add via you admin panel if you want:
They plan on releasing Google Analytics integration, Markdown (already have it actually), Likes, and a few more simple features. Free always but there will be a paid upgrades too. No advertisements are planned to be shown on your blog.
Roon.io – you are a compelling and different blogging platform, thank you for that.
Finally, check out this tech overview regarding images – CSS baby, wow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA9E8UcHK64&feature=youtu.be
Try it out for yourself – can you see yourself using it for a side-project or side-blog perhaps?
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