KolofonKolofon
A home for your prose that actually belongs to you.
A publishing engine for writers. Your domain, your texts, your database. No platform standing between you and your readers, taking a cut for the privilege.
kontakt@kolofon.dev
Where the name comes from
A colophon is the note at the back of a book — who set it, in what typeface, at which press. It names the apparatus of production, not the work. This engine is the same: it knows nothing about your brand, your authors or your writing. It renders what you give it, then gets out of the way.
Who it is for
You write regularly and want somewhere to keep it
A journal, prose from the road, essays, photographs with captions. Entries grouped into series, a shared stream, an archive still worth browsing three years from now.
You would rather not hand your readers to a middleman
On a platform, your readers are its users, not yours. It changes the terms, the algorithm, the rate. Here the address is yours and cannot be taken away.
You want it to look serious
Typography designed for long-form reading rather than scrolling. Share cards, RSS, sound SEO, installable on a phone.
What you get
Series and a stream
Entries belong to series, and the stream gathers everything into one current. A new series is one file, not a redesign.
Publishing ahead of time
Write in bursts, publish over months. An entry dated in the future waits and appears on its own — on the site, in RSS, in notifications.
An app and offline reading
Readers install the site on their phone and read underground with no signal. Push notifications announce a new text without anyone else's algorithm deciding whether it arrives.
Distribution
RSS plugs into automations — a new entry finds its own way to Facebook, Bluesky and wherever else you want it.
Readers
Comments with spam protection, star ratings, a view counter. Optional accounts giving a durable identity under a comment — or complete silence, if you prefer.
Your data
Entries are files in your repository. Comments and votes live in your database. Leaving means copying a directory, not negotiating with support.
Evidence
Kolofon is not a slide deck or a prototype. It was extracted from a site that has been running for months on its own domain and publishes regularly: several parallel series, a shared stream, publication spread over time, offline reading, notifications, reader ratings. Everything described above is in real use there — not on sample data. This page you are reading is itself an instance of Kolofon, put up in a day.
We do not name that site, and that is a feature rather than a dodge. Kolofon is built partly for people who publish under a pen name or with no name at all. If every deployment ended up in the vendor's portfolio, that promise would be worth about as much as a platform's terms of service. The rule runs both ways and starts with us: no instance is listed here, and any instance can switch off the engine signature in its footer with a single setting.
Instead of a client list there is a changelog — version history straight from the repository, commit timestamps included, with every decision and every mistake that had to be undone. It is harder evidence than a logo: it shows how the engine is built and how it responds to its own errors. It is currently written in Polish; the English translation is on its way. If you need to see a working deployment before deciding, write and we will arrange a walkthrough.
What Kolofon does not do
It will not bring you readers
There is no directory, no recommendations, no front page full of other people's writing. Reach is yours to build. Platforms promise more here — and sometimes deliver, in exchange for control over your audience.
There is no admin panel yet
Entries are files. For writers who only want to write, we do this by hand for now — we set up the instance, load the texts and teach the workflow. That deliberately does not scale to a thousand customers.
It is not self-service
There is no “create a site” button that hands you one in a minute. Every instance starts with a conversation, because early deployments teach us more than a signup form.
Contact
Writing, and looking for somewhere to put it? Send a few sentences about what you publish and what is missing where you publish now. We reply to everyone.