Everything dorkbord can do, how to do it, and the questions people actually ask.
dorkbord is a corkboard in your browser. You pin things to it, stick notes on it, draw on it, and put toys on it. It is meant to be handled rather than organized — there are no folders, no tags and no projects, just a wall and the things on it.
There is no password. Type your email address, and dorkbord sends you a link that signs you in. The link works on whatever device you open it on, so you can ask for it on a laptop and open it on another machine.
Every new board arrives with a few things already on it — notes explaining the basics, a photograph, some string. Read it, then throw it away: the board menu in the top left has Clear this board at the bottom.
Double-click anywhere on the empty board and you get a note. Type into it. Click away when you are done.
The dock along the bottom holds the rest: notes, photographs, stickers, the marker, the eraser, pins, whiteboards, clocks, timers, toys and sound. Most of them open a little menu with the choices in it.
This is the fastest way to get most things onto a board. You can paste or drop:
Yes. dorkbord is almost entirely dragging, and a fingertip cannot do the fiddly parts — pinning a note, tying string between two pins, popping one bubble. Open it on a phone and it will say so politely rather than let you struggle. Published boards and this page read fine anywhere.
Drag the empty board to pan. Scroll or pinch to zoom — out until the whole board is on screen, in to three times life size. There is a zoom cluster in the top right, with a button that fits the whole board at once.
Where you are looking is remembered per device, so a board opens where you left it — and not where your collaborator left it, because you are both looking at different parts of the same wall.
The eye button in the top right hides the whole interface — the dock, the board’s name, the zoom cluster, all of it — leaving the board and the wall. H does the same from the keyboard. A faint button stays in the corner so there is always a way back, and it brightens as soon as the pointer goes near it.
Four board sizes — Small, Medium, Large and XL. Small and Medium are free; Large comes with Super Dork and Dork Lord, and XL with Dork Lord. Changing size keeps everything centered, and anything that will not fit a smaller board is moved inside the edge rather than lost.
Three surfaces, and the surface decides what holds things on:
Switching a cork board to a whiteboard turns every pin on it into a magnet, because there are no pushpins on a whiteboard.
The cork, the plaster and the timber are photographs rather than patterns, and they fade as you pull back so the repeat never gives itself away.
Double-click bare board to put a note down. Double-click a note to write on it.
Square, Tall and Sheet are gummed across the top. The three strips are gummed down their left edge, and the shadow under each one follows the glue.
New notes land at a slight angle by default, the way a hand would put one down. If you would rather they came down square, switch New notes to Perfect in Appearance → Paper. Notes already on the board keep the angle they have.
Twelve collections of eight, chosen per board: Pastel, Nature, Summer, Cool, Autumn, Citrus, Berry, Ocean, Desert, Neon, Monochrome and Classic. Notes on a dark board come out dark; the collection sets the hue and the board sets how light it is.
Classic is the one that does not vary: every note comes out the same soft yellow, like a pad from a shop. The pens still come in eight colors.
Notes stick to other notes and to photographs, by their glued edge — drop a note so its sticky edge lands on another and it rides along when you move the one underneath. A pushpin through a note holds it down.
Drag a pin onto a note to pin it down. Delete cuts a piece of string.
Drag a picture in from your machine, paste one, or drag one straight out of another browser tab. A picture dragged in from the web is copied to your board rather than linked, so it does not disappear when the other site moves it.
Paste a link onto the board and it becomes a screen you can play without leaving:
Each one comes in three sizes.
Three hundred stickers across eleven drawers — animals, faces, food, hands, nature, objects, desk, tech, travel, play and marks.
The ones you reach for most rise to the top of the sheet, and you can upload your own with Super Dork or Dork Lord — anything you add gets a cut white border of its own and lives on that board's sheet for everyone who can edit it.
Put a whiteboard on the corkboard, at any size, and write on it. There is a neon mode — glowing tube ink on a dark panel, with the glow switchable. Throwing a whiteboard away takes its writing with it, and undo brings both back.
Things to fiddle with while you think.
A soundscape mixer with ten layers, each with its own volume: Rain, Waves, Stream, Fire, Fireworks, Crickets, Birds, Cafe, Jazz and Hum. Mix them however you like. Soundscapes come with Super Dork and Dork Lord.
Everything else you hear — clicks, pops, paper, switches — is made on the spot rather than played from a file. It is all off until you ask for it.
Right-click anything and a ring of controls appears around it. What is on the ring depends on what you clicked — color and rotate on most things, text on a note, string on a pin, copy and save on a picture, a shadow switch, and a bin on everything. Right-click the bare board instead and you get a ring of note shapes to drop one from.
Photographs, screens and whiteboards have a grip on their bottom-right corner. Drag it. A photograph keeps its shape so it never comes out stretched, and so does a TikTok.
A note sticks to another note, or to a photograph, when you drop it so that its glued edge lands on top. Square notes are glued across the top; the long strips are glued down the left. Once stuck, moving the bottom one carries the top one with it.
Stickers stick to anything. A pushpin dragged onto a note pins it down.
Right-drag across the board to lasso a group. From there you can move them or copy them to a new board.
The undo button is in the bottom-left corner of the dock, and Delete throws away whatever is selected. Anything you throw away goes to the bin first and comes back in one click.
Open the board's People panel. Turn the link on and hand it to somebody. By default a link lets people look; you can set it to let them edit instead.
Changes appear as they are made. A row of faces in the corner shows who else is on the board right now — click it to change what somebody is allowed to do.
In the People panel, set who can open the board to Public. Anybody can then read it with no account at all, it gets an address under your handle, and it can appear on the front page.
Publishing is one-way. Once a board is public it stays public. You can take it off the front page and you can delete it, but you cannot make it private again — otherwise every link anybody had to it would quietly break.
Published boards get a proper address under your handle, like
dorkbord.com/@you/kitchen-plans, and old addresses keep working if
you rename the board. The front page lists the most-visited
public boards, plus a few we have pinned.
dorkbord.com/@yourhandle shows
who you are and everything you have published.Every board can have an email address of its own. Open the People panel and give the board an address; anything sent there lands on the board:
Quoted threads, forwarding headers and confidentiality footers are trimmed off so what you get is the message. Tracking pixels are not loaded.
Forward things to it, send yourself a photograph from your phone, or give the address to somebody who does not use dorkbord.
dorkbord wants a mouse or a trackpad. Almost everything in it is a drag, and a fingertip cannot do the fiddly parts. It will tell you as much if you open it on a phone. This page and everybody's published boards read fine anywhere.
Click a question.
Yes, unless you share it. A new board is private to you. Nothing is visible to anybody else until you turn on a link, add somebody, or publish it.
Not for making boards. dorkbord is almost entirely dragging and a fingertip cannot do the fiddly parts, so it says so politely rather than letting you struggle. You can read published boards and somebody’s page on a phone.
One without an account, three with a free account, ten as a Super Dork and twenty-five as a Dork Lord. There is no limit on what goes on a board. See the plans.
More boards, bigger boards, custom stickers, soundscapes and messaging. Sharing and working on a board together come with any free account.
Pictures you upload are stored with your account so they appear on any device you sign in on, and for anybody you share the board with. A copy is also kept in your browser so a board opens fast and works if you go offline for a moment.
It is copied to your board rather than linked, so it keeps working when the other site moves or deletes it.
Yes. Changes appear as they are made. The only thing you can collide on is both dragging the same object at the same time, which is the one case you can see happening.
You have been given view access. The board will say “View only” in the top bar. Ask the owner to make you an editor — they can do it from the People panel, or by clicking the row of faces.
No. Deleting a board is permanent. Things you delete on a board come back with Undo; the board itself does not.
It puts a four-digit code in front of a private board so somebody who finds your browser already signed in cannot idly read it. It is not encryption and it does not hide the board from us — it is a lock on a drawer, not a safe.
Because people may have linked to it. Narrowing it would break every one of those links silently. Delete it instead if you want it gone.
Yes. In Appearance → Paper, set New notes to Perfect and they come down square from then on. Notes already on the board keep the angle they have — turn one straight with the rotate control on its own ring.
No — there are twelve color collections, chosen per board, with eight colors in each. The board’s surface decides how light they come out.
Yes. Pick the Classic collection in Appearance → Paper and every note on the board comes out the one soft yellow, with no variation. The pens still come in eight colors.
Yes, and the drawing belongs to the photograph. Move it, turn it or resize it and the drawing goes with it.
With the whiteboard — ink belongs to the thing it was drawn on. Undo brings both back together.
Paste a YouTube, Twitch, Spotify, X or TikTok link onto the board and it becomes a screen you can play in place.
Yes, with Super Dork or Dork Lord. There is an upload button on the sticker sheet. What you add gets its own cut white border and lives on that board’s sheet, so anybody who can edit the board can use it too.
Paste or drop them. A picture, a video link, any web address, or a .docx, .rtf, .md or text file all become the right kind of object on their own. Double-clicking bare board gives you a note.
Yes. Right-drag across the board to lasso a group, then send them to a new board or copy them there.
No. You get one email about a board, and not another until you have looked at it. Every one carries an unsubscribe link, and you can mute a single board without unwatching it.
Yes. Press H, or the eye button in the top right, and everything but the board goes. A faint button stays in the corner to bring it back, and it comes up to full as soon as you move the pointer near it. It is remembered, so a board opens the way you left it.
Only if you ask. The soundscape mixer is off until you turn a layer on. The small interaction sounds — clicks, paper, pops — can be switched off in the appearance menu.
Yes. Things stop animating and everything is still drawn where it belongs. Timers keep counting, because a timer that stopped would be broken rather than calm.
No — it runs in the browser. It is built for Chrome and works best there.
There is a Report a bug button in the top-left corner of the board. It sends us what happened along with a picture of what you were looking at. Or write to myke@dorkbord.com.
In the Account panel. You get thirty days to change your mind, and after that your boards, pictures and messages are deleted.