Blogging is a great way to express yourself as a writer. However, there are times when you don’t want other people to know that you’re the one behind the keyboard. In a world where the political environment is becoming increasingly polarized, there’s a very real risk that things you publicly post online can have an impact on your real life. This has made mainstream social media platforms like Facebook less popular for sharing sensitive opinions. But if you want to talk to people about what you really think, where else should you go?
Read: 10 Best Anonymous Chat Apps When You Want To Talk To Strangers
We’ve curated a list of anonymous blogging platforms here. These range from no-frills sites to apps, to a clever way of anonymously using WordPress. None of these options require your real name, email address or any personal details. Let’s have a look at the best ways you can do that:
If you really want to stay anonymous, use a VPN before you log in to any of these blogging platforms.
Best Anonymous Blogging Platforms
1. Write.as
Who it’s for: Users who want to jump into anonymous blogging without registration formalities
If you only want to create a single anonymous blog post with photos and all sorts of embedded stuff, check out Telegraph.
Write.as promotes itself as a “minimalist, privacy-focused” writing platform. The app’s user interface looks very similar to Medium. To start blogging, all you do is click on “write something” on the homepage. You then write whatever it is you want and click on the “publish” icon at top right.
By default, Write.as sets you as an anonymous user. However, you can change this to a username of your choice. For example, if you the username – ‘Tom’, your blog address will become write.as/tom. Going to this link will show all your posts sorted by published date.
There’s very basic user functionality built-in: the first time you exit from Write.as, it asks you to set a passphrase for your account or link to an email. There’s no confirmation procedure at all. This is great from a privacy standpoint: You get two levels of privacy to pick from. If you decide to not use an email, just make sure you don’t forget your username and password, else you won’t be able to access your account.
Publishing from your write.as username is anonymous to start with since it isn’t associated with any other data tied to you. This lets you create an audience on the platform without having your real identity outed. But selecting the anonymous option takes this a step further, making your posts truly anonymous. It’s text-only, though, so there’s no way to incorporate images, video, or even advanced text formatting.
Pros:Â
- No email confirmation process
- Anonymous posting mode can conceal your identity, including your write.as username
Cons:
- Text formatting functions are very basic
- You can’t upload videos, images, or other media
Read: 5 Anonymous Texting Apps That Don’t Require Your Phone Number
2. Notepin
Who it’s for: Users who want a more feature-complete alternative to Write.as
As we mentioned earlier, the main drawback to Write.as is that it is perhaps a bit too minimalist. There’s no support for multimedia like videos or images. This means that you’re forced to rely on just text. With Vlogs and rich content becoming more important in the blogging space, it’d be nice to have an anonymous platform that lets you put up more than just text. Notepin is great because it does everything Write-as does and then some more.
You get to pick a username, which then becomes part of your blog’s URL. Adding a password is optional. After this, you’re taken straight to the posting screen. You can type what you want and also add images. Strictly speaking, Notepin allows you to upload any arbitrary file, but non-image files just show up as placeholder text. This is a small, but critical advantage: your anonymous blog post doesn’t just have to be text.
Notepin has a paid subscription option, too. If you opt for the higher-end $19 per month offering, you get extra features like Google Analytics tracking and the option to use a custom domain, instead of Notepin’s own.
Pros:
- No login required
- Lets you upload images to complement your blog
- Do not appear in search results on Google
Cons:
- Advanced blogging features locked behind a paywall
3. Vent
Who it’s for: People who want to “vent” emotionally and talk anonymously about things in their life
Vent has taken the idea of public venting and combined it with anonymous blogging.
The previous two options have a major constraint in terms of audience-building: the only way to access your blog with either of them is for users to visit your blog’s URL. It’s not easy to just search for it. Vent is a mobile app (available for both Android and iOS), though. It allows users to keyword search for both users and vents that they can relate to.
This makes your posts much more visible to the wider public. The idea is to get you emotional support from people that are interested in what you’re venting about. While Vent requires email verification, you have the option of setting your user ID to whatever you like, protecting your anonymity.
Pros:
- Easier for audience members to search and find your posts
- Users can connect with each other and chat
- Do not appear in search results on Google
Cons:
- Email verification takes away one layer of anonymity since Vent knows who you are
4. Lyfster
Who it’s for: Users who want an alternative to Vent that’s less focused on emotional venting
Lyfster is a good alternative if you like anonymous posting functions of Vent, but are put off by the emotional support aspect. What if you just want to anonymously discuss things that matter to you, without the need for a pat on the back? Lyster lets you put up text posts and images with a username of your choice. (You can pick to post anonymously, too).
Functionally, it’s very similar to Vent: your posts and content are published in the name of the alias you pick and the material is searchable by other users.
While the aim of the Lyfster is to have less confessional material, in practice the community is very similar to Vent’s. We found a lot of people discussing heartbreaks and other emotional life events, with other users giving them the support they need.
Pros:
- Doesn’t explicitly emphasize the emotional support aspect–promotes itself as a general anonymous posting platform
Cons:
- The community still mainly puts out confessional content.
5. Anonymous Wordpress Blogging
Who it’s for: Full-time bloggers who want to leverage WordPress’s rich feature set
While the options we talked about here deliver varying levels of privacy and blogger-friendly features, there’s really just no competition for what you can accomplish with a good WordPress blog. All the previous options don’t show your blog posts on Google search results, so if you want audience coming from a search engine, Wordpress is a goto platform. And the sheer number of useful plugins, including for SEO, just make it a better blogging platform all in all.
What if you could have all the advantages of a proper Wordpress blog while still maintaining anonymity? You’ll have to jump through some hoops, but it’s possible.
WordPress requires you to register with a valid email ID. And if you want to use premium functions, you’ll need to set up a payment method, which effectively compromises your anonymity. Thankfully, my tests indicate that WordPress does not blacklist disposable email sites such as temp-mail. It’s a bit technical to set one up though.
All you have to do to use WordPress anonymously is register an account with a temp-mail ID as the username or use service like protonmail, avoid Gmail ID. Next, you need to purchase a domain (like example.com) and a host. Make sure you use a proxy name and most importantly, pay anonymously using bitcoins or cryptocurrency. This is because anyone on the internet can run a search on a who.is database and find out who’s paying for it and get the person name address.
This limits your audience to people who’ve found your URL through other means (such as you link to it). WordPress blogs, on the other hand, are Google indexed. This means that your anonymous Wordpress blog will get much more traffic.
Pros:
- All the benefits of a free WordPress subscription
- The WordPress domain is more recognizable
- Google indexing means more traffic
Cons:
- You can’t use any paid-for features without compromising your anonymity
Wrapping Up
Each of these anonymous blogging options has its own benefits and drawbacks.
If you are looking to post occasionally, check out Telegraph from the popular app Telegram. You can post a single article without register an account.
Sites like Write.as and Notepin take the “anonymous” aspect very seriously. You don’t need to enter credentials to start your anonymous blog there. However, a lack of Google search indexing means it’ll be difficult for new users to find your content. Apps like Vent and Lyfster combine anonymous blogging with social media elements.
These are platforms where you can share Facebook-like posts while still maintaining user anonymity. But while they protect you from user scrutiny, the apps themselves require email verification and they can learn plenty about you.
Anonymous WordPress blogging is the closest we have to an anonymous blogging “hack.” By using a temporary email ID, you can get access to all the benefits of WordPress without putting your identity out there. The flip side is that you won’t be able to benefit from any of WordPress’s numerous paid-for features without compromising anonymity.
