After many months of hard work, we can proudly present the new ENGRAVE. It's faster, better and stronger than ever. Significant changes will allow bloggers to cooperate and get maximum benefits from the Steem blockchain. Our goal was to create a better and simpler place to blog on Steem in a unique way.
And after many improvements, it's also much, much easier for us to develop new features, so you can expect more of them in the upcoming weeks. This is me, working on Engrave.
What is ENGRAVE
Read our first post post: ENGRAVE - first complete blogging platform built on top of Steem network
Engrave is a native blogging platform with a completely different approach. You can create a blockchain-powered website in just a few seconds with your own desired domain. You can choose your website's design from modern and nice-looking templates with integrated Steemconnect. Your readers can vote and comment on your articles directly from your blog to make it worth more. Engrave helps hobbyists to create their own blogs on Steem, build an audience and monetize almost every legal content easily. Encouraging readers was never easier because of great and dynamically growing Steem userbase. With our help, you can build own blog and reach valuable readers to earn on your content without having skills other than writing!
New features
We've introduced significant changes to our infrastructure, codebase, and working flow.
Brand new dashboard
The new Engrave dashboard is rewritten from scratch. It is a feature-full frontend application created in React technology. It fully utilizes new Engrave API which is also created from scratch and allows everyone to do great things.
New Dashboard works much better on both PC and mobiles. It has a clear design and it's easy to use. Try it and you will love it!
Multiple blogs per user
As a blogger, I love to write about different things. Something about #technology, something about #photography and sometimes, something about my beloved pet #dog.
In some situations, you would love to differentiate your content between multiple blogs. And now, it's possible with Engrave! You can create i.e. technology.engrave.website to write about technology and mydog.engrave.website to write about... well... you've got the point.
All your posts will be added to your Steem account but you will have two, totally different blogs on different domains and maybe different themes. Feel free to share your technology blog with coworkers and animal blog with your friends on Facebook.
You can create and remove your blogs at any moment. And now, you can change your blog address after it is created.
Multiple users per blog
It's hard to create a popular blog or news website on your own. You need to regularly post new articles and sometimes you just don't have time or inspiration. With Engrave, you can cooperate with your friend to create a blog. Just add your friend's account to your collaborators and he will be able to post his articles under your domain.
He will not be able to post his articles using your account. His articles will be added to his Steem account. But it will be displayed on your Engrave blog.
We believe that cooperation will be a crucial part of Steem economy in the near future. It's becoming harder and harder to earn tokens on your own. Such cooperation will allow a group of people to gather common readers and regular voters.
In the next big release, we plan to add functionality to cooperate on the same account. It will be the easiest and safest way to share account without sending keys to anyone. And you will be able to moderate someone work before publishing it! Stay tuned.
New categorizing system
Tags integrated into the blockchain are a pretty good way to mark your posts' topics. But on a real blog, you need to have categories. And now, you can categorize your posts with multiple categories and you can change them any time.
Managing articles' categories is stupid-simple. Just select an appropriate category from dropdown, save your post and that's it. Previously, you could select only one category and you couldn't change it later. All of these limitations are gone.
Managing your blog's categories is also super simple. Type your desired category name and press Enter. Nothing more. Engrave will take care of everything else.
Importing old posts from blockchain
Engrave is a real blogging platform. We focus on blogs, not accounts and it is great to start a new blogging adventure. But we understand that sometimes it would be great to have your previously published articles on your new Engrave blog. From now on, every user can import his posts to Engrave. Feel free to log in and do that.
It's also possible to quickly hide or reveal any post on your blog with just a single click.
Login, import, categorize, hide and reveal. You're now a real blogger.
Easier custom domain configuration
Engrave is a unique project which allows you to create blogs and configure custom domains to use it. And it is much easier now. Just add two DNS records, type your domain name and save your blog settings. It is that simple.
Moreover, you can add or remove your custom domain at any time. Your blog will be always available on our subdomain (unless you choose redirection to the custom domain). If something will be wrong with your custom domain, disable the redirection and have our blog still working perfectly fine until you solve the problems.
Way lower commission
From the very beginning, we've set a high commission (15%). These days, Engrave was just a proof of concept. We loved to see rising userbase but we had much more work to do than we could handle. This commission was a handbrake, which allowed us to handle everything correctly. But we are ready now to lower it to only 5%. It will allow us just to maintain our infrastructure, pay for domains and necessary certificates. But wait!
Early adopters!
Almost six hundred people have tried Engrave until now. We love you guys! We really appreciate being with us from the very beginning! We would like to show you our gratitude.
If you see this badge in your dashboard, it means that you've got an Early Adopter status and you're using ENGRAVE for free! Forever. Check your dashboard! We won't add any beneficiaries to your posts.
Thank you, Early Adopters. We wouldn't be there without you.
New working flow
We've spent a lot of time not only on our architecture but also on our working flow. Moving to microservices, docker containers and Gitlab CI/CD changed the way we develop and deploy new features. Deployments are automatic and bullet-proof (with health checks and automatic rollbacks in case of any problems). I know it may not be interesting from the blogger's perspective and you may not even notice anything from these things, but we did a great job on that field.
I'm going to write more technical articles about our engineering. It may help other developers to push their project to production in a safe and bullet-proof way.
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