Lifting Anchor
In the past few years the web has gone through a tonne of changes, from the way we write our code to the way we distribute it. Anchor was originally conceived in a much simpler time, when the web wasn’t so saturated with new ways of managing your web content. We the maintainers of Anchor were unable to keep up with the rapid growth that surrounds this space, due to full-time commitments. Anchor was a side project that we tried to keep alive, for you, the community who may have used Anchor for your personal or professional projects.
However, this past year has posed many challenges for us and regrettably we were unable to keep the commitment to this project. It became stale and unmaintained; which lead to a group decision that it would be best to archive the project. In an ideal world we would re-approach the problem that Anchor was trying to solve, adapting to the new ways we as developers build our websites. We started planning a replacement for Anchor but unfortunately we were unable to commit the time that such a project needed and new solutions quickly sprouted left, right and center; making such an endeavour less viable.
Anchor was a big part of our professional and personal lives, some of us used it as our way into the open-source world, some of us did it for fun as a side project and for others it was a way to share our personal ideas with a community.
The creation
Back in 2011, Charlotte (Creator) was producing a lot of entertainable content on the web, usually posted on Twitter or Dribbble under the alias “Visual Idiot” and as part of this she wanted a tailored solution to manage the content for her blog posts, each of which had it’s own style and flair, unique to each post. She wanted a CMS which allowed her to easily implement custom styles and formats for each of her blog posts without “bolting on” a tonne of plugins. And so she built Anchor. Initially a private project, she then open-sourced it on GitHub where at the point of writing this has amassed over 3.4k stars. Not too shabby for a small side project.
Charlotte later left the project in the hands of the rest of us, to keep it alive and to maintain it whilst she continued with other endeavours and projects.
Reflection
Maintaining this project has been a journey for us all. We’ve made some good friends along the way, doing what we love 💖 but sadly we have to say goodbye to Anchor, and move on to newer and better things. We don’t want you to stop using Anchor if you enjoy the project and we welcome you to create your own forks and continue working on it; we’d love to see what you make of it!
We have had some of you offer to take over maintaining the project, which we love. The community around Anchor has been great and we highly appreciate everything you’ve all done for it, but on a more personal note: this project isn’t ours, it was designed and conceived by our dear friend Charlotte.
Goodbye
In April of 2020 Charlotte passed away. Amongst a challenging year, this was a hard time for us all. She was a great friend, a talented designer, developer and an all round inspiration. This project wouldn’t have been possible without her. We wouldn’t have met each other without her and some of us may not have been so fortunate in our careers without her.
So as a thank you to her, we wanted to keep this this project “In the family” and use the success of Anchor to help causes that most mattered to her.
If you were inspired by Anchor, Charlotte or made good use of the project, we’d appreciate it if you were able to donate a small amount to her favourite charity. :)
Thank your for your support over the years, the Anchor CMS team ⚓️💖
