OpenPress is a design concept for a decentralized WordPress community platform.

Simply put, OpenPress adds functionality and an interface to your website that enables you to run your own micro publishing platform using readily-available WordPress technology.

Your website, and the content you’re publishing, can then be connected to a network of other websites that are also using OpenPress. The result is a network that is powered by individuals, but connected as a community.

Instead of going to a platform like Twitter to write updates and share valuable content, you do it directly from your website. Your content remains yours, and can be shared and consumed within the WordPress community of OpenPress users. (This will be a familiar concept for those of you who know about the fediverse.)

Your Profile Page

Your Profile page displays a public feed of your “Updates”, which is short-form content like tweets. Followers can interact with your Updates by leaving comments or trackbacks.

Your Profile photo and bio are pulled in from your site’s WordPress profile area in the WordPress admin. You’ll continue to see this pattern: we’re leaning on as many existing WordPress features as possible to reduce the complexity and increase familiarity and feasibility.

The Publish Page

The Publish page is where you create your Updates. By pulling in block editor components for the content editor, we can provide a familiar, content-rich editing experience within this new interface.

Your Updates can be published immediately, scheduled, or saved as a draft to work on later. Sounding too complex? These features are already built into WordPress. 

The Update Feed Page

The Update Feed is where you consume and interact with content from users you follow. You can comment on Updates from your followers, add reactions, and manage the accounts you follow here.

Notice there are no ads or other business-oriented decisions playing out in your feed. Your feed is yours, and free of junk. It only shows what you want it to show (in whatever order you want to see it).

Check it out!

Although this is just a design concept, there is significant momentum growing around decentralized platforms. If you’re interested in following along, please check out the site and sign up for the newsletter.

I’ll send you updates about where the project is, and ping you for feedback about what you want to see happen next with our community.