There are numerous simplified blogging tools on the market today. Some of these tools are from developers who believe that WordPress, arguably the world’s best blogging platform, has become too bloated and is more of a CMS now. The others are from developers who want to work on their own take and ideology of what an ideal no-hassle blogging tool should be like. A lot of these new tools are either available as a service or as downloadable self-hosted systems and put a huge focus on distraction-free writing environments. Roon is a similar service that claims to be “the easiest way to blog“. Let’s find out what Roon has to offer.
Roon is a project by the duo of Sam Soffes and Drew Wilson. These names should sound very familiar to you, as Sam has previously worked on Cheddar — the service that offered ridiculously simple lists across the web, iPhone & iPad and is currently at Seesaw while Drew has a really long list of awesome projects to his name. Roon is their take on how simple the act of blogging should be. Unlike Tumblr though, which is focused on sharing anything & everything, Roon focuses solely on long form articles with big, bold featured images. And the duo definitely delivers with Roon.
Roon not only exists as a service on the web, but also has an iPhone app that you can download free on the App Store. The service is free to sign up & use, and will have additional paid features like custom domains. When you sign up, you can choose a subdomain username such as preshit.roon.io and since the service is fairly new, the username you want is probably available. It also has one of the most minimally beautiful dashboards and writing areas I have ever come across. Here’s how it looks.
The left pane contains a list of your drafts and published posts while the right pane is where you type. When you sign up and are taken to the dashboard for the first time, the cursor already exists in the writing pane, so you can begin typing right there. Notice how everything else fades out when the cursor focus is in the writing pane, letting you focus on your words as you type. Roon supports Markdown and also has buttons at the bottom of the editor if you are not familiar with the syntax. You can drag and drop images onto the editor and it’ll automatically upload them to the servers and embed them into your post. There are nifty word and character counts at the bottom left when you’re editing a post, which is a nice touch. Three buttons at the top right let you Preview, Save and Publish your post.
Your avatar at the bottom lets you access the Settings, which are split into Personal and Blog. The former is for your personal details (name/email/bio/url) & password while the latter lets you customize the font type (Serif or Sans), the accent color and also offers an option to export your data, so you’re not tied into the service. The avatar also hides a power button to sign you out.
Roon’s iPhone app is just as beautiful and continues with the simplicity of the web app. It has mostly white, minimal interface with a few striking blue buttons. The app is great for blogging on the move or during the long & boring train rides. It has an additional layer of buttons above the keyboard for the markdown specific styling and also lets you upload images from your photo library, or click new ones. You can swipe across your list of posts to view the buttons for publish, preview or delete. There’s something about how these buttons look that I really like.
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Roon has taken off in the right direction by offering an iPhone app from the very beginning. Both the web as well as the iPhone app are simple in how they look & work, with a heavy focus on getting you writing. Both feature a really elegant user interface and work great. The website says Roon will also offer a Mac app soon. Roon is a great service if all you want is to write and publish. You can sign up for an account right away and grab the app from the App Store here.