I’ve made a few posts on HEY World now, and I have thoughts. They’re not that hot, but they are thoughts. Mostly? It’s good. It’s super new and basic, but there’s a lot to love.
The Good
Easy Posting
Posting on HEY World is easy. Anywhere you can use HEY, you can post. I want to be able to use MarsEdit, which feels unlikely will ever happen. Writing directly in markdown is a nice-to-have, but you can write in your favorite markdown editor. Showing the preview, copying the results, and pasting into HEY works on macOS and iOS.
Posting on HEY World is easy. Anywhere you can use HEY, you can post. I want to be able to use MarsEdit, which feels unlikely will ever happen. Writing directly in markdown is a nice-to-have, but you can write in your favorite markdown editor. Showing the preview, copying the results, and pasting into HEY works on macOS and iOS.
Good Looks
You can have any template you want in HEY, as long as it’s the one available template. Thankfully it’s a great-looking template. All I want from a blog is that it’s simple good looking site with a list of posts.
Wish List
I don’t want to say these are bad things in HEY World, but as it grows and improves, I’d love to see them added.
Custom RSS
I use a Feedpress for my RSS feed. It’s great. If I ever change what I’m using to blog and the feed URL changes, I can point Feedpress to the new URL and take my subscribers with me. Unfortunately, almost no blogging sites have a way to do this — weirdly, Squarespace does this and makes it super-easy.
Custom Domain
I could redirect collindonnell.com, but for several reasons, that’s not a good solution. Basecamp is working on custom domains for HEY, so hopefully, this will come along with that.
Nav Links
If you’re going to use HEY World as your primary blog, it would be nice to have a couple of links up top that go somewhere else, like Twitter, Micro.blog, or anywhere else.
Header Levels
There’s one header level. It would be nice to have at least 2–3.
Final Thoughts
HEY World is doing what Basecamp wants it to do. It makes posting easy. It loads fast. The mailing list feature is a nice one. One thing I thought of putting in my wish list was a bit of reporting — daily visitors and RSS subscribers. I’m not sure. Being able to write and not think about those things is liberating in a way. I’m not sure.
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