As part of my never ending quest for personal growth, I have maintained a personal journal for many years. I usually grab a snapshot of how I look for the day and write a paragraph or two of how the day went, where my mood was, that sort of thing. For this activity I’ve relied on Day One, available of Mac and iOS devices, to accomplish this feat. When I first started using Day One there was an option to sync using iCloud; later on they moved to a subscription based plan with encrypted storage on their own servers. I’ve gone with this subscription for the past year or two. I’m not a huge fan of subscription based software but I was pleased enough with Day One so I paid the yearly fee.
Today Day One announced they had been acquired by Automattic, the same company that owns WordPress (the software that powers this blog), Tumblr, and some other things. This acquisition gives me pause. I’ve been becoming less enamored with WordPress as time marches on. What was once a very fairly simple blogging experience has turned into something a little too convoluted for my taste. WordPress has thrown a lot of bells and whistles into the platform and the experience is starting to feel “bloated”. Plus, I’m really sure WordPress would preferred my hosting of the blog on their website instead of using the standalone version that I use today. I don’t want to trust my information to a third party like that. This blog turns 20 years old in August. That’s a lot of data. In fact, I’ve been looking for a different solution for the blog and hope to migrate to a faster, less cumbersome experience by the celebration of the aforementioned anniversary.
I’m a bit concerned WordPress will start to add bloat and unneeded “features” to the Day One app, so without an evidence of changes on the horizon I’ve started looking for a replacement. I’m currently looking at Diarly, which stores information in Apple’s iCloud instead of relying on yet another syncing service. This approach involves putting a lot of faith in iCloud, but if any tech company is worthy of my trust, it’s Apple. So I’m going to give Diarly a try for the next week and see if I enjoy it.
I wish Automattic all the success they seek with the acquisition of Day One. I’m just not sure I’ll be part of that success.
Becoming less enamoured of WordPress is something to which I can relate. It has indeed become rather bloated and it feels less customisable than I’d like too. Thanks for the tip about Diarly. I just with Apple had a decent blogging or journalling app (I used to use iWeb for my blog if you can imagine), they’d do great.
Good luck on your search and I hope to keep seeing your blog entries!