Most people who search for a way to share a diary online with a link do not want to publish a journal. They wrote one page — a trip, a letter, a piece they are proud of — and they want a URL they can paste into a message. The rest of what they write should stay exactly as private as it was.
A lot of "share your diary" tools treat the whole account as the unit: turn sharing on and everything becomes visible, or keep everything locked and there is no link to send. Storyie does the narrower thing. You publish one entry, you get a permanent address for that entry, and nothing else moves.
TL;DR
- Every diary and note starts private. Publishing is a toggle on that one entry.
- A public entry gets a short
storyie.com/d/…(diary) orstoryie.com/n/…(note) URL that anyone can open without an account. - Copy and X buttons sit on every public page (LINE as well when the entry is in Japanese) so you can hand the same link around.
- Unpublish and the page goes down immediately; the address stays reserved so republishing restores the same URL.
- A public link is not a shared journal — one is a door onto the open web, the other is invite-only.
Publish the one page, not the account
New entries default to private. The editor has a public/private control for the entry you are looking at — diaries on /diary/new and /diary/[slug]/edit, notes the same way. Flip that one control and only that page becomes reachable on the web. There is no account-wide "make my diary public" switch, and publishing never walks the rest of your writing.
That is the whole mechanism. You do not generate a share token, pick an expiry, or decide who is on an allow-list. The page is either a public URL or it is not.
What the link actually is
Once an entry is public it has two addresses that point at the same page:
- A short URL,
storyie.com/d/your-entry-title-codefor a diary (orstoryie.com/n/…for a note). This is the compact address meant for typing or pasting by hand. - The canonical URL,
storyie.com/u/yourname/diary/your-entry-title-code, which is the page search engines and the browser's address bar settle on. The short URL 308-redirects there, so a reader who opens either one lands in the same place. The Copy button on the public page puts this canonical URL on the clipboard (with a small referral tag so you can tell traffic that came from a share).
Both are ordinary HTTPS pages. A reader does not install the app, create an account, or sign in to read. Signing in is only needed to like or leave a comment. The public page also generates a large-image social preview automatically, so pasting the URL into a chat or a post shows a card rather than a bare string.
On the public page itself there are Copy link and X buttons; a LINE button appears as well when the entry's language is Japanese. Copy puts the canonical URL on the clipboard; on a phone, the X button uses the system share sheet when the browser supports it. You do not have to remember either URL pattern — the page you just published already has the buttons.
What a stranger can and cannot see
Opening the link shows that one entry, plus whatever you have put on your public profile (account name, avatar, bio, location, website if you filled them in, public diary and note counts, a writing-streak badge, simple writing stats). Your email address is never on any public page.
Private writing is never teased, never linked, and never sitting behind a "see more." If you have published other entries as well, the same page may show a "More from this author" strip of those public pages (and a "View all posts" link to your profile). A reader who follows that strip still only sees entries you have also chosen to publish. How that privacy model works in more detail is in a public online diary anyone can read, without publishing the rest — this post is about getting and handing over the link.
Search engines only pick up public entries with real substance (roughly 800 characters and 150 words). A short page is still readable at its URL; it just is not submitted for indexing, so a two-line note you share with one person does not become a search result.
Unpublish, and the same link still belongs to that entry
Changed your mind? Switch the entry back to private and the public page stops resolving immediately. Anyone who still has the URL will not be able to read it. The slug is not recycled onto some other entry, so if you publish that same page again later, the original URL starts working again — you do not have to go back to every chat and replace the link.
One free-plan detail is worth knowing before you unpublish in a busy month. Public entries do not count toward the free plan's monthly private-diary cap (15 entries per month on the current free plan). Making a public entry private again puts it back in that count. If you are already at the cap, Storyie will refuse the unpublish until the next UTC calendar month starts, or until you are on Pro, which has no such cap. Publishing itself is available on the free plan; you are not paying to mint a link.
A public link is not a shared journal
If what you actually want is a few specific people reading along — family, a partner, a small group — a public URL is the wrong tool, because anyone who gets the URL can open it. Shared journals, in the mobile app, are invite-only spaces whose entries can never be made public, never appear on a public profile, and never go into search results.
Use a public link when the point is "here is a page on the open web." Use a shared journal when the point is "these people, and not the internet." The two do not replace each other.
If you later want a shorter address for the collection of pages you have already published, a Pro subdomain serves the same public entries at yourname.storyie.com. It does not expose private writing, and it is not required to share a single link.
Takeaways
To share a diary online with a link: write the entry, make that one entry public, copy the URL (or use the buttons on the page), and send it. Everything else you have written stays private. Unpublish if you want the door closed; republish if you want the same door open again.
For what to write in the first place, see five ways to use Storyie. To start writing, sign up in the browser, or get the app for iPhone or Android.
