Publishing

Writing without a site

You do not need a website or a connected CMS to use Mastheads. Write, review and take your articles out yourself - nothing is lost by not connecting.

Mastheads does not need to touch your website to be useful. You can write, check and export every article without ever connecting a CMS. There is no special mode to choose: you simply do not connect a site, or connect one later.

On this page

Two ways to work without a site

No website at all

Sign up and skip the website step. Setup asks for your language, country, article length, voice and whether articles carry a picture, and you start writing straight away. Your articles are filed under For you - your profile - with your profile's defaults.

Everything on demand works: every way in, the ten editorial desks, the authenticity panel, the editor.

A domain with nothing connected

Set up a domain from your website, then press Connect later at the CMS step. The domain knows your site's language, country and topics from the scan, so articles are written for it - they just are not sent to it.

You can even switch on the autonomous newsroom for a domain with no CMS. It then writes drafts on schedule for you to review and take out yourself. A newsroom that only writes drafts is a complete way to work, not a lesser one.

Getting your articles out

Without a connected site, you take each article out yourself:

One article - copy it with its links and headings intact, or export it as Markdown or HTML, and paste it wherever you publish.
Everything - Download everything in Settings gives you one archive of every article, its sources and its picture. See Export and portability.
By code - on Growth and Pro, the content API returns your articles to your own systems. See the API reference.

What counts against your allowance

An article counts when it is written, not when it is published. A finished article you never publish still used one article from your allowance - and so does an article held as Needs a look, because it was written. A run refused before writing, because no usable sources were found, costs nothing.

Connecting later

Nothing is lost by waiting. Connect a domain's site at any time from Publishing in the left rail, then open any finished article and press Publish. See Connect your CMS.