Diaryland is one of the OG online diary platforms, launched in 1999 by Canadian developer Andrew Smales. For those of us who started out on Diaryland way back when "blog" was years away from becoming a household word, we writers poured our souls out on this simple but much-loved platform. What's remarkable about Diaryland in 2026 is that Andrew has kept all of our old diaries alive for all these years! Amazing.
Even more amazing, Andrew has recently overhauled the Diaryland interface, rebuilding it from the studs. Diaryland Version 2 launched this past May 2026, and it's brimming with elegant new features—with more on the way. Andrew is in development mode, hence the evergreen post.
Diaryland's most engaging features are the ones that make it more than just a blogging platform. Diaryland is a vibrant writing community, offering a multitude of ways to explore entries other members have added, favorite other diaries, message each other, and publish your writing in a variety of ways to reach readers beyond your diary.
What It Costs
Diaryland is still free to use, but for dormant diaries there's a one-time resurrection fee of $19. Also, like the Version 1 "Gold" and "Super Gold" membership fees, if you want access to extra features it's $4.99 a month. Well worth it, if you ask me. Read on to learn why...
Who It's For
Make no mistake, Diaryland is still a platform for writers. It's an online home full of tools to strengthen and amplify personal writing. You won't find any corporate blogs where posts are actually sales pitches. If you want to promote yourself or your product, go to Wordpress or LinkedIn. Nor will you find any business bloggers who are more interested in SEO, analytics, and paid subscriptions. If that's your jam, you'll fit better on Substack.
On Diaryland, you can explore ideas, write personal prose, poems, or lyrics, write to clear your head, keep a record of your life, and more. Only share what you want to share, as you can make the whole diary private, or make individual entries private. Diaryland doesn't require your real name if you'd prefer to write anonymously, nor does it sell your information. It doesn't have ads. There's no AI. The servers powering Diaryland are private. It's completely independent. The only development machinery behind Diaryland is Andrew. He might even "Favorite" your diary. You can Message him, and he will reply back.
The New Features
The new and improved Diaryland experience begins at the Dashboard. Here you're presented with:
- Your User Name (Note to legacy members: we can change our User Names now)
- A link to your live Diary
- A Daily Prompt for writing inspiration (optional)
- A "While You Were Away" note that will tell you what features were added since you last logged in
- A rolling list of the most recently updated diaries across the platform
The left-hand menu begins with Add an entry. Below that are five sections: Writing, Diary Tools, Publishing, Profile, and Community. We'll go through these sections one-by-one.
Add an entry
Here is where your blank page opens, and you are invited to write whatever you want and give your entry a descriptive Title. Above the Title, you'll see an icon to add images with a click. Preview, Draft, and Publish are self-explanatory.
You'll also see an icon for Settings.
Settings
Under Settings you can choose to write your entry in Classic text and HTML or Markdown languages, set the entry date and time, or schedule your entry to post later. Give it a unique URL name. The URL name can be a shortened version of your entry title, and it will appear in the browser address bar as: https://username.diaryland.com/URL name.
You can also add add tags. Tags you specify here will show up in Search Engines, unless you set your diary to Private.
Writing
Under the Writing section on the left-hand menu you'll find Drafts and All entries. Drafts displays all unpublished entries.
All entries
Not only does All entries display every entry you've ever published, this area is also where you can Search your entries on title, page, date, text, or by tag. You can Sort the results several ways, and display up to 100 results.
Diary Tools
Diary Tools is the next section of the left-hand menu. There are some truly useful tools here, and Andrew is always making improvements.
Prompts
Under Prompts you can participate in the Daily Prompt writing exercise. You get unlimited space to type your answer, which can be made public or private, or you can turn it into a diary entry. The Prompts are an excellent way to get your creative thoughts flowing, especially useful if you kind of want to start blogging but don't know what to write (a question this writer/blogger gets a lot). You'll find many optional alternative prompts to fuel your writing, and you can read others' responses.
Template
Template is where you choose from the 15 (and counting) new diary templates, or pick one of the legacy templates from "old school" Diaryland. You can also code changes to your chosen template here, or of course, make your own from scratch. You'll find lots of "Template Variables" here--short coded terms that make it easy to insert page elements where you want them.
Stats
Stats shows you number of Visitors by day, last 7 days, 30 days, and all time. There's a ton of other information here. Have some fun looking around.
Images
Images contains a library of all the images in your diary, and you can upload, search or delete images.
Publishing
Newsletter, Zines, and Books comprise the new Publishing tools. Diaryland appeals to writers with this expanded capability to reach readers beyond the diary/blog. At the moment, all three Publishing tools are free to use.
Newsletter
Newsletters have long become the standard for reporting on the activities of a business or organization, internal and customer-facing. Substack was in fact originally built in 2018 to help writers collect email subscribers for sending out paid newsletters. Newsletters can also be communication containing personal opinions or interests—much like a blog. So Newsletters are a natural extension of Diaryland.
Under Newsletter you can generate a Public (anyone can subscribe) or Private (invite only) version, specify the invitation style, then start collecting email subscribers to your diary. A Newsletter can be an entry you are already writing, or an entirely different email written specifically for your subscribers. (If you have a subscriber list in another platform and want to switch, you can import it.)
Zines
More than a few writers went from hand-assembling zines directly to writing on Diaryland in the late 90s, so the fact that 2026 Diaryland has a Zine feature is glorious, like coming full circle.
Under Zines you can do several cool things. For those who participate in the Prompts Answer page, all Prompts pages from participating writers come together into a Zine every week. The issue comes out on Sundays. It's yet another way Diaryland promotes a vibrant community of writers.
Another thing you can do here is make a Zine from your diary. It's simple to add pages, text boxes, images, shapes, borders, even draw freehand right in the page. You have the option of letting others read your Zines on the web or download them as a PDF. You can even go old school and print them!
Books
The Books tool enables you to turn your diary into a long-form manuscript. Sections include chapters, a foreword, a preface, a note to the reader, an afterword, acknowledgments, and author bio, among other things. Books lets you pull from your diary, or write fresh copy. Your diary can be where you work out ideas and outlines, make notes on your research, or share reflections on your writing process. It's the simplest, most elegant Book Writing tool out there, and ideal for the Diaryland writer seeking to use entries as a launchpad for a Book. Books is similar to Zines in that your readers can read the finished product on the web or download an EPUB or PDF.
Profile
The Profile section of the left-hand menu includes My diary, My profile, Privacy, and Settings (not to be confused with the Settings option under Writing.)
My diary takes you to your diary home page view.
My profile is where you can put some info about yourself. A profile is entirely optional. You can add links here, to your social media sites and other websites. Your profile also shows you Notes and Questions you've received, a list of your favorite diaries, and diaries that list yours among their favorites.
Under Privacy you can go back and make certain entries private, or make the whole diary private. You can also Lock it so that any logged-in Diaryland member can read it but not strangers and search engines, or partially Lock it so that only select Diaryland members can read it. You can set the privacy settings on Notes, Comments, and Questions.
Settings is a controls menu for a whole host of Diary elements. Here you can manage RSS feed, change your user name, manage membership, social media integration, and much more. A useful Setting is Focus Mode. When you enter Focus Mode your diary turns into a private, minimalist writing space, omitting community features, setting your diary to its most private state, and giving you a grayscale interface.
Community
The last (but not least) of the left-hand menu items is Community. Tools that foster the active writer's community were popular in Diaryland Version 1 in 1999, but they've been greatly enhanced in Diaryland Version 2. The Community tools are largely featured in the other parts of Diaryland, but here they're consolidated and expanded.
Especially cool are the ever-evolving tools under the Experimental menu.
- Add a Reader to capture RSS and other feeds (Bluesky, Mastodon)
- Browse public entries gathered around a shared idea on Shelves
- Create a small Site with HTML and CSS hosted on your subdomain beside your diary
...and more!
What I would say to Diaryland's original 90s members whose accounts (thanks Andrew) are still there, and I count quite a few among my dearest friends: YOU GUYS! YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS! What I would say to the writers who want to check out a whole new way to work: You guys? you have to see this.
Long live Diaryland!☺
(SuperLowBudge is Boston-based writer and blogger Michelle DiPoala, whose a #GenX blog called "Diary of a Low Budget Superhero" started on Diaryland in the year of our Lord 2000)
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