Markdown Notes is going offline

I built Markdown Notes in 2013 to make it easier to write engineering notes. It was also an opportunity to get familiar with frontend web development.

It’s now 2020. I have long left university, and I have not used Markdown Notes in a few years. I also haven’t touched its code since March 2017.

I am impressed that this project survived with no maintenance for nearly 4 years. The web app still works, and the daily backups still run. However, the world has changed in 7 years, and Markdown Notes has not kept up. Notes are saved unencrypted. The API does not support HTTPS. It definitely does not comply with GDPR.

More importantly, keeping Markdown Notes online costs money. I cannot justify the expense anymore.

If you still use Markdown Notes

Markdown Notes still has about a hundred active users. If you are one of them, it’s time to download your notes and move to another service. You have until July 31, 2021 to save a copy of your data. On August 1, 2021, the website will go offline forever. The domain will not be renewed. The data will not be saved.

Hosting Markdown Notes yourself

If you want to keep using Markdown Notes, you can host it yourself. The source is on GitHub. The code is old, and not particularly elegant, but it has worked reliably for 7 years. It is released in the public domain, so you can do anything you want with it.