Web editor Barley opens to all as it unveils a 30-day free trial, new templates, and more

Web editor Barley has opened its doors to the public, emerging from being invite-only and allowing new customers to use its simple and gorgeous-looking interface. With today’s news comes the release of new templates and features and the roll out of a 30-day free trial customers can take advantage of.

The first product from Plain, Barley is a WYSIWYG (“What you see is what you get”) editor that allows you to add, update, or delete content and images right from any page on a site without needing to log into WordPress or any other administrative system. Since its private launch in May 2013, the service has accumulated more than 12,000 interested customers with several hundred admitted in.

Along with its formless Content Management System, Barley has received a slight upgrade with the release of Page and Content Types. With this, template authors can allow their customers to add Pages to their own sites, reorder their navigation items, and customize the Barley menu to add new blog posts, podcast episodes, music tracks, photo albums, events, and anything else.

In addition, users will find four new responsive website templates to choose from. Similar to WordPress templates, they are open sourced and can be downloaded from Barley’s GitHub site. The new ones are called Sequoia, Red Oak, Cypress, and Juniper. In total, the service offers seven templates.

Seeking to further incentivize people to try out its service, Plain has implemented a 30-day free trial. Normally, the service costs $18 per month per site.

Barley is one of the latest services to hit the scene seeking to help people set up scalable websites without needing to install software or hire someone to do the work for them. Furthermore, it’s placing emphasis on design of the site over the coding.

It competes with services like Y Combinator alumnus Padlet, which launched in April. With WordPress also taking on more of a design approach, it might be possible that we see Barley butting heads with the blogging platform as well.

Plain was started by the former technology evangelist of Viddler, Colin Devroe, its former product manager Jeff Johns, and freelance designer Kyle Ruane. You can read our review of the service here.

Photo credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images