The word
A colophon is the note at the end of a book that says how it was made: who set the type, on what press, in which typeface. It is the maker's mark of publishing, a small statement that craft matters.
This colophon is the same idea for your blog. It is the machinery that turns your words into a well-made publication, and then gets out of the way.
The belief
Your words are the point; everything else is mechanism. So a colophon site is just a git repository of plain text. Posts are Markdown files. Your syndication history is a committed ledger. Your generated images live in your repo. There is no database, no admin panel, no account, and no export button, because there is nothing to export. Delete colophon tomorrow and your writing is all still there, readable in any text editor.
The open web gets the same respect. Feeds are first-class, your markup speaks microformats2, webmentions connect you to other sites, and syndication follows the POSSE principle: publish on your own site, then share copies elsewhere. Platforms come and go; your domain stays yours.
And every reader counts: colophon output targets WCAG 2.2 Level AAA, and every page works before JavaScript arrives.
The deal
colophon is free and open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. No paid tier, no hosted service, no telemetry surprises (the app's own anonymous usage ping is documented and one switch turns it off).
It is made by John Mylchreest, and this site is built with it. Issues and pull requests are welcome on GitHub.