I decided to give Posthaven a shot. You can view my extensive archive of (as of this writing) one post here: https://stanwjames.posthaven.com/
As a WordPress alternative, it strips blogging down to its basics. Is this good? Is this bad? Let’s make a list (or two)!
The Good
- It’s very easy to use. I was able to jump in and have things set up in a few minutes.
- It’s affordable! At $5 U.S. per month, it gives you up to 10 blogs (!) and as far as I can tell, you can only pay $5 per month, which means no year-long commitments. Want out after the first $5? Easy-peasy!
- It has a few nice themes to get you started.
- Editing posts is simple.
- Adding images is easy, and it automatically lets you click to expand on them. Other embeds (YouTube, etc.) are also straightforward.
- It has tags. I like tags. Maybe too much.
- People can easily upvote, comment or subscribe to your blogs.
- An RSS feed is available.
The Not So Good
- A large part of the ease of use is found through its limited options. You get some basic formatting options, and that’s about it.
- It only has five themes. If you want to create new ones, you can, but have to dive into HTML and CSS.
- It has no spelling checker, and LanguageTool does not seem to work in its text editor. This led me to editing my one post about seven times as I kept finding typos. I make a lot of typos.
- Images are not displayed in any kind of WYSIWYG way and they are sized based on the theme.
- Its feature request page only has two features as “planned”: more themes and markdown support.
The site describes itself as a work in progress, so I don’t ding it too much for being a bit barebones. The UI is simple, but very easy to use, and it’s one of the few blogging platforms I’ve been able to jump into and get posts out of that both look good and are easy to write/edit.
Still, I’m not ready to go all-in. I must continue to experiment before leaving WordPress behind.
