How to Conquer Content Chaos: The AllPub Creation Story

# How I Built AllPub (allpub.co): Write Once, Publish Everywhere

Welcome to my first blog post here. I'm sharing the story behind **AllPub**, a side project that's been consuming my evenings for the past few months—and it all started with a frustrating problem I couldn't ignore.

## The Problem: Publishing Is Broken

Picture this: It's Sunday night, and I just finished a solid article about integrating Supabase with Next.js. The writing felt great, the code examples were clean, and I was genuinely excited about publishing it. Then reality hit.

My publishing workflow looked like this:
1. Copy from Notion
2. Paste into Dev.to editor
3. Fix broken formatting
4. Re-upload images (they never transferred properly)
5. Add tags and adjust for Dev.to's quirks
6. Publish
7. Repeat the entire process for Hashnode
8. Do it again for LinkedIn (their editor is its own special kind of chaos)
9. Consider Medium if I still have energy left

By the time I finished, it was midnight, I was frustrated, and I was seriously questioning why I bother writing at all.

The real frustration? I draft everything in Notion because it's simply the best writing environment available. Clean interface, great organization, zero distractions. But getting content from Notion to these publishing platforms is a nightmare. Formatting breaks, code blocks disappear, and images? Don't even ask.

## Discovering I Wasn't Alone

I started investigating on Reddit, GitHub discussions, and Twitter. The response was immediate: tons of developers faced the exact same problem.

I found someone maintaining a spreadsheet just to track where they'd published what. Another developer gave up entirely and stuck to Dev.to only, despite wanting to reach different audiences. The Notion integration challenge kept appearing in conversation after conversation—so many of us draft there but struggle with manual recreation elsewhere.

The conclusion was clear: this was a real, widespread problem.

## The Catalyst

My wife asked me a simple question: "Why don't you just build something to fix it? Isn't that what you do?"

She was right. I spend my days solving problems through code. So why not solve this one?

The concept seemed straightforward: write once in Notion, then publish everywhere with a single click. Sure, other tools existed that claimed to do this, but most were limited, expensive, or completely misunderstood the developer workflow.

## Building AllPub: The Technical Reality

### What I Wanted to Achieve

- Connect to Notion workspaces (read-only, because I'm not reckless)
- Handle format conversions automatically
- Publish to multiple platforms simultaneously
- Keep costs reasonable
- Actually work reliably (surprisingly radical)

### The Tech Stack

I used what I know best:

- **Frontend:** Next.js + Tailwind CSS
- **Backend:** Supabase
- **Authentication:** Clerk
- **Hosting:** Vercel

Nothing fancy, but solid and purpose-built.

### The Real Challenges

**API Integrations:** Each platform is its own unique challenge. Notion's API is actually well-designed once you understand blocks. Dev.to's is straightforward and documented. Hashnode's GraphQL API is clean but requires a learning curve. LinkedIn's publishing API exists in a category all its own.

**Content Transformation:** Converting Notion's block-based structure into markdown that works across platforms was genuinely difficult. Code blocks alone had six different edge cases to handle.

**OAuth Security:** Getting users to connect their accounts without feeling like they're surrendering their privacy. Clear permissions, transparent explanations, read-only access only.

The real challenge wasn't the tech stack—it was managing all these different APIs and their quirks. Medium's API is limited. Dev.to's is solid. Some platforms (looking at you, LinkedIn) barely have usable APIs at all.

Modern AI coding tools made this process significantly faster than it would have been even a year ago. Instead of endless documentation searching, I could describe what I needed and work from functioning code. I still needed to understand the architecture and ensure everything made sense, but the initial development velocity was incredible.

## Where AllPub Stands Today

After four months of evenings, weekends, and excessive coffee, AllPub is working and people are actively using it.

**Current features:**
- Notion integration (read-only)
- Publishing to Dev.to and Hashnode
- Automatic format conversion
- Scheduled publishing
- Free beta

**Coming soon:**
- WordPress and Ghost support
- LinkedIn integration
- Enhanced analytics

The feedback has been encouraging. Users report saving 20-30 minutes per post, which makes those late nights genuinely worthwhile.

## Why This Matters

As I've developed AllPub, I've recognized where this problem shows up across different scenarios:

**For developers:**
- Library documentation that needs to live on GitHub, documentation sites, and Dev.to
- Release notes that should reach every platform your audience uses
- Tutorial series that perform differently on different platforms
- Personal branding content that needs maximum reach

**For the broader community:**
- More quality content reaches wider audiences
- Writers focus on writing, not platform management
- Knowledge sharing becomes easier
- The barrier to publishing content decreases

The Notion angle feels particularly important. Based on what I've observed, countless developers draft in Notion because it's simply the superior writing experience. But then they're trapped manually rebuilding everything for publishing.

## Key Lessons Learned

**Build for yourself first.** If you're not solving your own problem, you're probably building the wrong thing.

**APIs demand patience.** Budget double the time you think you'll need for integrations.

**The dev community provides invaluable feedback.** Some of our best feature ideas came from early users sharing their real workflows.

**MVP means functional, not broken.** Start small, but ensure it works well.

**Free beta is the best research tool.** Nothing beats real people using your actual product in real scenarios.

**AI tools genuinely accelerate development.** The velocity boost is real, though you still need solid architectural understanding.

## Try AllPub Today

If you're dealing with cross-posting headaches, I'd love to have you test allpub.co. It's free during beta, and I promise complete transparency about data and permissions.

Head to **allpub.co**—no credit card required. Connect your Notion workspace and start publishing.

If you try it, please share what breaks, what's missing, or what could work better. This product improves directly through user feedback.

## What About You?

I'm genuinely interested in your experience. If you:
- Write technical content and cross-posting makes you frustrated
- Draft in Notion and wish there was a magic button for publishing everywhere
- Spend entire evenings reformatting the same article for different platforms
- Think content distribution should be simpler

I'd love to hear from you. What does your current publishing workflow look like? Which platforms frustrate you most? What would actually make publishing easier for how you work?

Drop a comment below, share your publishing horror stories, or reach out directly. The AllPub roadmap is driven by what you tell me actually matters.

If you're building similar tools or want to chat about SaaS development, let's connect. I'm always up for talking shop with fellow builders.