Everything on Diaryland is centered around that.
I try to make every part of Diaryland as easy to use as possible. This has always been one of the main focuses, and is an ongoing task.
"Easy to use" mostly means that the interface should be fairly intuitive, but also means that things like the help section has an article for every feature on the site, and that every piece of documentation is as clear as possible.
This is a big thing for me lately. Around the time when Diaryland launched in 1999, having a template system was a fairly new thing, and made it incredible easy to create an online diary or webpage. Before templates, you had to do a bunch of HTML manually every time you wanted to create or edit a page on a website, and removing that friction and just letting you write was a real game-changer.
In the time since then, though, online publishing has not really moved on from templates. Every CMS or piece of blogging software just has a template system, and every post (or journal entry) you add looks the same as every other one, and most templates have a fairly standard look.
I have been trying very hard to come up with new ways for people to present and publish their writing. The best example of this (imo) is the Diaryland Zines feature. Zines are a way that you can design a little magazine-type publication from your diary entries (or using any writing). They are non-standard, you can add any kind of colours, shapes, images or decorative elements you want to them, and they can be different shapes and sizes.
Ultimately, these Zines can be displayed in a very nice way on the web, using existing web standards (no weird plug-ins or technology), or printed as PDFs. To me, these really are the opposite of a template.
There are other features on Diaryland to help you be creative and/or use your words in places other than your subdomain, and they are:
There are so many well-documented ways to try and hook people into a site and get them addicted to it. I think of these all the time, and I avoid them. Here's a list of things that have occurred to me that I do or do not do for this reason (this is not trying to talk up Diaryland, I just think it's good to point this out for various reasons):
I don't know exactly where the line is on gamification for engagement. As of this writing, I've been debating for a couple of weeks as to whether I should add a little box to the dashboard that shows you how many words you've written in your diary overall. This is such a close call: On one hand, it'd be kind of cool, and might even encourage you to write more frequently. On the other hand, is it still a mild form of manipulating you? This is a pretty mild example, but there are so many more.
On any site where you're keeping an online diary/journal, understanding the privacy levels is almost more important than anything else.
The Privacy page is linked from basically every page within the members dashboard, and I worked on it so hard before updating to v2.
When you visit it, it summarizes your current privacy settings in language that is meant to be as clear as possible, and provides clear buttons to change your privacy to settings that suit you better.
I'm also always looking for ways to make privacy clearer, and the controls more powerful. Not too long after the site updated to v2, a writer here suggested a new privacy level where your diary could be locked, but any Diaryland member could read it (without you having to specifically allow them), and it was such a good suggestion (powerful, but also easily understandable) that it was added as fast as possible.
As soon as I announced v2 was coming, I saw a diary entry assuming it would be filled with enshittification features. I understand this worry, but this is something I am way, way, way against, and actively resisting.
There will never be an AI character on here named Constable that suggests ideas for a diary entry, or cleans up your grammar, or "gets you started". There will never be an AI chatbot called Whiskers that tries to answer your help queries and just absolutely stinks. It's not going to happen! I am scowling as I type this, just thinking about it.
I know that dumb AI features are not the only aspect (or even a main part?) of the enshittification concept, but the other stuff is also not going to wreck Diaryland.
(also, Cory Doctorow, who coined the term and wrote the book Enshittification, had some nice things to say about Diaryland that I only found out about recently)
I try to keep as many features free and unlimited as possible. Some things have to be somewhat limited to paid members unfortunately.
In the earlier days, when the paid tier was called Gold (and Supergold) membership, comments were a paid feature, but when I updated the site to v2, I decided that comments are just such a core feature that it's not cool to paywall them.
Image hosting also used to be a paid feature, but is open to everyone now, but free tier members have less storage space, out of necessity (but there's also an option that will shrink your images to be more efficient, so you can store more of them).
My main principle, which I have discussed many times with people I know, is that I want to allow people to access as many features as possible, with as few limits as possible, and I think that will lead to people subscribing to the Support Plan because they feel positively towards Diaryland, and it has meaning to them.
This is probably also the place to say that there is no place for ads on Diaryland (I guess this goes along with the Interface section above). It would be such a bummer to have them, but also I think that long-term it'd be a mistake anyway. If you ever see ads on Diaryland, something went very wrong.
That's about it for now. I do think I'll probably continue to edit this document now and then to make things clearer, add ideas, etc.
Andrew Smales
July 31, 2026