Start a fucking blog
startafuckingblog.com
startafuckingblog.com
If you're serious about people "just starting blogs" you need a proof of concept that centralizes various blogs into an updating feed of subscribed blogs.
This isn't insurmountable. It's actually pretty simple, in a technical sense. The real trick is to get blogs to play along by providing an api endpoint that will enable a feeds to be generated in the ways that people use them (latest, hashtags, interest relevancy, searchability, etc), as well as endpoints that allow users to interact with them (comments, notifications, etc). Some of that is currently done with RSS, others will need a new (preferably less verbose) form of syndication.
You could even use simple iframes as the delivery mechanism for the blog content, that way the blogs still get their ad-impressions. So long as the posts showed up in a curated feed, without needing to actually click through to anything, it would be fine. The only other thing you would need is a sign-up process that is as simple as facebook or twitter. To the point where you might not even be sure you're creating a "blog", if that wasn't your explicit intention.
So yeah; when that platform/protocol becomes available, I'd say blogs are the silver bullet! Until then, the idea that we should all go back to scouring the net for bookmark-able content, or dealing with the static interaction of an RSS feed, is a non-starter. We didn't make/choose social media because it was useless. We did it because it was easy. That has to be a priority in any suggested alternative.
That's what I'm talking about because that's what it will take. No one has shown me anything like that, yet. Screenshots will be fine! But planet doesn't seem to do what I'm asking for, based on my (admittedly brief) look at it.
Most of the planets I know are usually maintained by group of people who already have their discussions sorted out in a different ways via mailing lists, forums, subreddits ... (eg. http://fedoraplanet.org/), so this is not something I have seen elsewhere.
It could be a value in this, esp. since people are less and less willing to maintain and moderate comments on their own blog sites, but for the same reason, it would not be that easy to bootstrap a community in this way, as someone will have to be responsible for it's operation, moderation, fighting spam and so on.
But I guess I should be more clear about the pitch because I know it's a little obtuse. Rather than thinking about a centralized blogging platform as the solution, I see that as only one part (the lesser part) of the solution. The other part is the aggregation sites.
So, for the centralized blogging, you get seamless, free, hosted (no domain), and ANONYMOUS blogging (no registrations to track you). Easy sign up, collects many users, and broadcasts them to the aggregation sites.
The aggregation site, on the other hand, doesn't do any moderation, doesn't do any comment handling, doesn't do any filtering. It just collects a list of urls that people want to subscribe to (so that those urls can be advertised to others), and negotiates with those blog urls to get the other endpoints that will allow for realtime commenting and interaction with the blog, itself.
The centralized blog would be a lot like twitter, and it would handle its own content moderation, just like any large host would.
But "power users" would have their own blogs which, when rendered as iframes, provides them with the entire publishing power of the internet. That kind of richer content serves as a reason for people who want to make a living on the internet to move away from the centralized blog(s; no reason others couldn't advertise their own apis to the aggregates; twitter included!) and on to their own servers.
So yeah! I see some value there, at least. An 'on-ramp to self publishing', as it were. Without the ever-present threat that your host can de-platform you (without recourse).
This Closure Planet is still active - https://planet.clojure.in I designed the theme about a decade ago as a fork from my website, and it still is holding strong today.
Does this type of aggregation allow for commenting and interaction?
Does this type of aggregation notify a user when they have commented on a blog in their feed and someone has responded to them?
Does this type of aggregation provide ad-impressions for the syndicated content?
Is this type of aggregation as simple to start with as it is to write your first tweet?
Again, I don't mean to be dismissive. I'm just trying to get across that what I'm talking about is a REPLACEMENT for social media. It's not some libertarian/technologist idea of what would be BETTER. It's harnessing the momentum that we know we have and focusing that into better technologies. But it has to work the same, or it's just another "hey guys, we should try this instead", which doesn't inspire a lot of my confidence (ymmv).
The notification that my website is discussed in another corner of the Internet is, I believe, what the Fediverse[1] is trying to do.
Ad-impression and revenue share has always been there. I can push ads via my RSS Feed, which used to be very popular and lucrative for good readership blogs.
It is definitely not easy to just start off but now I'm beginning to think, you are making fun. Anyways, it takes a village to build and maintain Twitter.
Case in point: grandmas use facebook, but they don't use hackernews. Grandmas will use a site that works like facebook, but will not create blogs or do even one extra step other than "sign up" and "write text into a box"/"upload images from their camera".
Social media isn't all journalists and the terminally online. I'm picking on "grandmas", but those dudes that sit in their truck and record political rants on tiktok apply as well. These people need an immediate outlet, and these are the biggest percentage of users (by consumption, rather than content production). MOST people just want to comment. The internet loves a peanut gallery, and god do people love to participate. So comments and realtime interactivity have to be a priority.
Moving on; I'm glad to hear that ads are available via RSS! I genuinely didn't know (though, I suspected they could be snuck in there, if it wasn't 'technically' a feature). I wonder, though, if they're modern enough to be useful? I doubt RSS can do pre-roll video content, or interstitial video ad insertion? If so, that's pretty great! But I think you'd need stuff like that for people who - say - posted webcomics and wanted to monetize that with video ads before and after their "articles". Or news outlets that wanted to share their latest "headline" clip.
As far as the fediverse, I like a lot of what it has done, but my concerns remain there, too. It's close to what we need, as far as decentralization goes, but it isn't seamless, yet, and it's simply NOT being picked up by the general public. My guess on that is because of the extra steps involved (again, grandmas and mirrored-sunglasses-bros). But I don't claim to be an expert there.
I used to design apps/programs for Pocket PC[1] Devices for Physicians in the USA, so they can be paid better and faster with lesser errors in the early part of 2000s. I heard the system being still used 10-15 years later. So, imagine building products for tiny screens with very limited power with lots of regulations/restrictions for grumpy physicians who wants to get paid on time. :-)
And yes, I also build Apps/Programs for Teachers so they can generate unlimited fun lessons for kids in 3-6 grades. Imagine making it easy and fun for the teachers to in turn use the tools to generate fun lessons for kids. I heard that thing won BAFTA and stuffs but I never looked back. :-)
It was fun.
Your desire to replicate all the ills of Facebook elsewhere is worse than staying on Facebook.
It's "freedom of speech without freedom of reach". Or whatever buzz phrase we're using to describe it, these days.
Curious, what is your basis for this assertion that "realtime" is the primary reason for social media? I think "realtime" has created this incessant need to watch and feed the machine. That has been an interesting diversion for a while, but I can't see it as healthy long term, IMO. I, and many others I know, check up on friends once or twice a day and then got on with our actual lives. With a less frenetic and more sane model of interaction, "realtime" is way down the list of important attributes.
So yeah. My opinion on the role of constant contact in a healthy society notwithstanding, there is a consumer hunger for it and while I can see it contracting, I can't see it ever going away to a point that it shouldn't be a design priority.
its called rss
Show me a site doing this (with rss or without) and I'll be happy to evangelize it!
but video ads? none for me thanks.
Edited to add:
As far as write.as, I like what they've done! I just want more rich content, rather than just text. That's kind of RSS's deal, too. Only text, all the time (exceptions make the rule). There's value in sharing all kinds of content, rather than just text.
Regarding your request for (interactive) commenting allover this thread (just joking), Hey Homepage will soon enable simple and accessible commenting features (in the background based on simple email).
In such cases, there is no backend to do any of what you're describing. But it's still a blog.
Note that this backend-less approach is actually quite common with blogs; it's one large reason that client-JS-driven embedded commenting systems like Discourse are popular with blogs.
I believe that has all the features you listed as wants.
I am kind of half joking but people do have very specific ways they want to consume content even if it is the same content.
I feel like this is 99.9% tackled by existing ActivityPub implementations. There are already a wide variety of clients (and servers) out there with lots of different capabilities, ways of reading/browsing, that suit a variety of consuming styles. Interaction is well-goverened in the spec itself & quite capable.
I would like to see a little more richer-media content. I am pretty partial to toot-threads myself but having more than just text+image post-threads seems like a pretty harsh technical limit. That said, my enemy in RSS feeds is when sites publish heavily stylized content; it's so gross having these blobs of content that don't fit well in my feed.
The TikTok algorithm but for RSS would be a winner.
Why does that matter?
It's an easy and free way to host a blog if you want to start a blog. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles you can get with Wordpress but if you just want to start a basic blog, it's perfectly suitable.
.org is the project page
.com is the hosting service
Ps: You actually lost me at the "Fuck Twitter" part. It actually has been better for me since Elon took over and Mastodon has never convinced me with its hallmarks of the old Twitter.
What you see as bad, I see as a strong positive signal that we aren't taking ourselves too seriously (it would be phrased delicately if it were), that we aren't here to be nice & tactful.
We're here because we're humans & we're wrestling with bullshit & we should at this point have some attitude & flippancy about where we are & how we got here & how badly we need to progress. It's time to spring ourselves from the trap, already, to start to re-emerge better genuinely human possibilities.
This is a Network (1976) Mad As Hell moment. And it fits; it's apparent to many, many are mad as hell at what online social media has become, what it's impact has been on society. "You've got to get mad." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE
In general, one of my signs of empathic & in touch people is that they can get past their own response & start to tune in & sympathize with, understand other people's disposition & reason, even if they don't like it. Taking the best side of your opponent in debate, the most charitable interpretation you can muster, is the fastest route to progress. I think there's a ton of ways this form here can be a good influence, but more so, I think the content is right on, and it's worth trying to get past your yuck for.
> This site was heavily influenced by the geniuses behind Motherfucking Website and Better Motherfucking Website.
One of the words in the dictionary was "dickhead," who definition was this: "A person of no consequence. One's boss is invariably a dickhead."
Lol.
One time I was in Yunnan province in China and it was an americans birthday in the local cafe that served coffee and was frequented by expats and english teachers and so on - he told me this absolutely amazing story about some of his travels and it was so great and such an impressive story, and I felt close to him so I said ...
"You're full of it right?"
"Excuse me?"
"Oh that story is totally full of shit!"
He stares at me a bit. I'm smiling and looking at him.
He begins crying, turns around and begins walking out the door and up the street at a fast pace. I chase behind him. He's saying "go away go away", I say "I'm not sure what's happened are you ok?" "You said Iwas full of shit" "Oh that's an expression I meant I loved your story so much it couldn't be real". Needless to say that relationship did not go anywhere unfortunately. He was a good guy who had some awesome experiences. AND IT WAS HIS BIRTHDAY.
He was from California if that means anything.
Moral of the story: I think it's ok for an australian to be australian in Australia or the US but on neutral terrirtory could lead to misunderstandings wuickly. By the way, I was a grade below in high school with "Nat" from "Nats what I reckon" it was a relatively privileged school in Sydney known for its alternative student lead projects and lack of marks - Nat is a classic at swearing - he grew up in Surry Hills a trendy part of the inner city fringe my dad ran a Graphic Design business there. HE is a an unique character who me and my best male friend looked up to - we caught the same bus home every day - we'd practice guitar and drums and then listen to him drumming on the bus with pencils and it was better than what we could do with drumsticks and a proper kit! my other friend had some success in music too, so its' an alternative kind of school (Steiner/Waldorf) in the sense that if parents could send their kids there they were ok with them getting into arts and so on - and if you are curious - this is what cultured (in the sense of artisanal and developed) swearing is like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WrvFvzdhCo
(he was known already around the warehouse and music scene here as a bit of a character but didn't hit big fame until the pandemic)
From what I understand the misunderstanding I had with "The American" in Yunnan might be ok in like New York or Jersey or something where they have what's called "busting your balls" ... e.g. Elaine in Seinfeld saying "GET OUT" and pushing a guy. I dunno.
I also seem to with some frequency have some big cultural misunderstandings with americans of about the same age, gender and cultural class on neutral territory - to the point I now avoid talking to Americans of the same age and gender! "I'm afraid of americans" by David Bowie, highly relateable hehe I thin of it like siblings - we are actually quite close but those little differences can lead to huge misunderstandings.
(I kid of course but would never touch it myself for the obvious problems it has)
However from a personal level the main two ones for me are the poor quality of its codebase and the lack of care or common sense around the official plugin repository, bordering on outright incompetence on their part for allowing unvetted and highly dangerous plugins to stay on the official repo.
Honestly as a developer for going on 20 years in a professional capacity I physically recoil at the absolute awfulnes of the codebase.
But it still works fine for my blogs, and I've not had any issues. I also know a lot of folks that use it for sites.
What are the alternatives?
Remember that most of the folks I work with are far, far from tech wizards.
FTFY
That's a bit of a useless comment, isn't it?
This is why I phrased it that way - I think it's an important nugget of information but many folks have limited time to read, or were turned off by the style, and may have not scrolled all the way to the footer to see that.
I thought that comment might help more discussion of bloggery by hand waving the controversial style as an imperfect homage to something intentionally crude.
To that end I also figured there was potential discussion in how OP article doesn't quite hit the same poetic cadence as motherfuckingwebsite.
I am apparently a moron.
I cloned the git repo. https://github.com/kevquirk/startablog It is all markdown. OK, I get a markdown converter for my linux server, but wait... the actual posts are in _posts/YYYY, so there must be some kind of script that goes through this thing and generates html... I am at a loss for what that is or where it is located?
This seems like relevant documentation: https://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/04/02/a-step-by-step-guide...
You know, it seems easier to just write the thing for something so simple... otherwise we have to now keep track of ruby and gems and such. I mean, it is one more thing for a simple blog, right?
I thought the first paragraph was kinda funny, but it was hard to read past that.
I do agree with the sentiment though. It's been my new years resolution for about 5 years now to actually write something on my blog. I find there is an interest mix of intimacy and privacy on a blog. If I post some off the cuff thought to Facebook or Twitter it's almost out of place. There's a sort of social adequate to what you can and can't post to social media. Facebook is a place for family and friend stuff, Twitter is kinda a place for short updates and thoughts for people who care enough about you to read it. But there are no rules on my blog. And no one close to me really cares about what I'm writing on my blog so it feels more private while also being more open and personal because I feel I can write pretty much anything.
ah, just another satirical f-bomb-blog.
The author clearly doesn't understand the concept of audience. I have thousands of followers on Twitter, just hundreds on Mastodon.
We can't move, we can only transition and hope others follow.
Also, don't expect a lot of people to read your blog, unless you have a very hot take, like this post lol
numbers vs community.
I was on twitter for 7 years. Hundreds of followers, thousands of tweets. Maybe 6 actual replies in that time.
I've been on mastodon for 5 years now. I have people I'd genuinely call friends. A community. Regular meaningful engagement with actual humans about the stuff we make and share with each other.
Twitter isn't designed for engagement between people. its designed to make money by getting you to engage with twitter as a platform.
Masto is chronological, so there’s WAY more chance of natural discovery of content. It’s not buried by the algorithm because it doesn’t align with the hot take of the day, or isn't “trending”.
I’ve personally found Mastodon to be far more engaging than Twitter, but that’s probably not going to be the se for everyone.
Many people with very large followings on twitter have reported that with even 10% or less as many followers on mastodon, they're seeing more engagement in terms of replies and like and boosts than they see on twitter for the same content.
Maybe instead of views, consider the effect of your words on the outside world. How often does a tweet change your thinking or deeply enlighten you? The rare times something like this sorta happens is in the awkward form of a tweet thread, where it would've been much better as a proper article. Speaking personally, there's blog articles that have vastly changed my view of some part of reality and improved my life.
Let's pretend you have a blog, you're writing on it for years. It's affecting people positively. But nobody ever says a thing about it directly to you, you have no analytics running in the background, no like button. Eventually, you're probably going to stop writing on the blog, feeling it's a waste of time.
We can point to popular bloggers all we want, but the fact remains most of them either have some form of view count operating (or likes/claps/whatever gimmick to replicate that "I see you" validation), had rare real life validation based on their blogs (being hired at xyz place because someone said they were a fan... but usually these blogs tend to go abandoned after they get hired), or relied on social networks to encourage them to continue writing their blogs.
Until this is solved in a healthier way, we're not really going to be free of view counts.
The way you get free of view counts is by not worrying about them.
In case you use them interchangeably, what do you write about?
A log is a journal.
Ergo, to write a blog is to journal something.
[1]: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/academic-development/ass...
(user account exists to promote Hitler worship, I checked)
This is why I have a hard time with how many people push against view counts as the ultimate bad. They are just another metric, one we use for validation, but still just a metric. Sure, you might think it's healthier to care about more WebMentions, but what are those when you peel away the layers of branding?
I suppose we can't really escape our desperate need to be seen, even in digital space.
In the early days of websites people often just had articles organized by topic on their website that interested readers could peruse. There might be a "What's New" section to let people know what was updated, but other than that old content was treated as being just as relevant as new content.
The blog space flipped that. Instead of most of the information being presented non-chronologically with a possible area to let people know what's new, now information was prioritized by how new it was, with a possible area to list older posts. Old blog posts that don't make it to the list end up being well hidden and almost never read.
For most people, the appeal of a blog over the older long-form articles was that blogs provided a somewhat constant stream of new content. You hear this when people tell others how to blog - "right a blog post everyday/everyweek." With a personal website, you don't want your high quality articles drowned out in a sea of low level off the cuff writing. But most blogs thrive on that, because a stream of new articles is needed to keep people coming back. Almost no one would want to put a low effort website up that only says, "Man, watching the news this week. What is the world coming to?", but those kinds of hot takes are all over the blog world.
Additionally, on older sites comments often consisted of an individual e-mailing the author of a site, who might that have a page for useful reader comments. The blog comment space was about firing off quick reactions, getting a quick response, and then having the whole discussion buried a day (or sometimes mere hours) later as other blog posts supplanted the top one.
I remember it differently. Personal websites of the day were structured much like blogs would be, with a single index page listing all the articles in reverse-chronological order (or for the lazy/unconcerned with bandwidth, a big honking text file with new entries appended to the top). What you're describing wasn't the blog precursors, but the wiki precursors, with pages nicely organized according to topic (with copious links to the related sites in your webring).
I agree that one of the biggest original draws of the "blog" concept was the convenient comments section, but in retrospect comments aren't at all necessary to the concept of "blogging", especially since the term now encompasses the pre-blog activity that was previously just "throwing up random articles on your own personal domain".
As for the view count trap, we all prominently displayed our "N people have viewed this page" widgets on Geocities. :P
I don't think that was the norm at all outside of news sites. Like I said, there might be a what's new page, but I remember sites mostly organizing articles by topic, and updating them inside the article. See, for instance, the Marathon Story Page[1]. All of the articles are there on the side bar, organized by topic. There is a "What's New" section, but it's not useful for reaching the bulk of the site. It contains updates, not the content. The blog movement flipped this.
You can see this shift in action by looking at the site superdickery.com. If you look at early versions of the site[2], it's nicely organized based on topic. Then at some point the join the ongoing trend and turn it into a blog[3], and almost all the content becomes obscure and difficult to find.
[1] https://marathon.bungie.org/story/ [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20070829035629/http://www.superd... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20150831061840/http://www.superd...
I critique your comment: the use of the word trap implies an inherent negativity to view count. As dang has written, often some of these raw numbers (similar to the length of a comment on HN) have a strong correlation with the quality of the content.
But now you're in the trap, because you've accepted these numbers as the true proxy for influencing the world, and doing anything orthogonal to the algorithm will make number go down. In reality, you're doing what Twitter wants, not necessarily what you originally wanted.
Traps are for catching animals to eat. There’s nothing good about that for the animal. Even if you extend the analogy to the bait that got the animal in the trap, I still think it’s fundamentally different in that the outcome of these recommendation algorithms hits the spot after the fact. My Instagram Reels feeds me standup comic bits that are tailored to my taste! It’s a marvel of the modern world.
I highlight your use of true proxy as showing I failed to communicated my point. As long as you/we keep in mind that updoots and retweets are just the best we currently have and not a natural truth, we can continue to work towards a healthier alternative.
audience size directly correlates with revenue, so if you want to make any money on the internet you have to find some kind of strategy to cultivate said audience. It's not the only thing that correlates with revenue, but it's foolish to ignore its significance.
Although their goal, given their post history, is not to get lots of people to read their blog - but to start writing, and to potentially have the right people read your blog. (And vice versa, to get the right blogs for them to actuallt get written.)
I shut Twitter notifications off on my phone because all I still get at group chat spam about fake crypto giveaways and ads for Twitter Blue which I'm pretty sure violates Apple's app store terms.
Even the influencer types I follow see higher engagement on Mastodon even if the numbers look smaller, and have thrown in the towel.
Twitter's dead and buried.
I think it's actually that your side of the internet and the people you follow are in the tech niche, i.e. people who are conscious about this stuff are the ones who are leaving.
But the bulk of users, the people who don't care about technology, the millions of teenagers and memers are all going to stay on twitter.
I did notice that Twitter began banning people who the now CEO dislikes, and then letting some previously banned people back on such as the newly under arrest Andrew Tate who is almost certainly a participant in human trafficking.
In the real world, Musk is making twitter a toxic brand and his own image with it. He's not taking on establishment media so much as shitposting nonsense memes and tanking the value of his companies.
Sure you have thousands of followers, but nobody will see your tweet 5 days from now.
With blog posts, you might not have thousands of followers, but if you pick your topic well, google no doubt sends you thousands of readers every month, for years to come.
Don't underestimate the power of SEO.
My speculation: Most of the people that are using Twitter aren't post a lot, nor are they posting anything a lot of "quality". Most is low signal, such as agreement. That does not make for an interesting blog. They are posting on Twitter because they have people saying things they like and in turn liking their support. Part of the reason people are having trouble with Mastodon is they do not have as wide a reach, so less fulfillment.
Take this blog for example, this one post is about 1/4 interesting information and 3/4 anti Twitter/Musk. I am glad that he made it, always great to share how to build and use tools!
I doubt that they will continue the blog though, their second post is them saying they are too lazy to write something quality and Lorem ipsum.
Most people want low effort engagement and most people do not consistently generate quality content. That is why Twitter gained and blogs lost.
As if LinkedIn deprioritizes content that links out to…your blog.
How many of those are human?
> just hundreds on Mastodon
Whereas those are most probably actual people.
> How many of those are human?
Many more than the ones that are on Mastodon.
I don't know of any mastodon servers that report view counts, but interaction on mastodon (replies, likes, boosts) is reported to be dramatically higher per follower than interaction on twitter (replies, likes, retweets).
Your mileage may vary, but it seems to be pretty consistent.
My own take on this calculus is that those thousands of followers on Twitter are by definition comprised of the kind of people who voluntarily use Twitter, which is not the audience that I care to select for. I'd rather have ten high-quality followers than ten thousand low-quality ones.
There is a bit more bias towards audience size as the reason this is hard than I'm comfortable with though. Twitter as a medium is, in my controversial opinion, almost always a better medium than a blog.
There's a ton of counter-opinions, but I quite enjoy seeing a thread of toots, that decompose an idea into different segments. Having the tree of comments shooting off the thread adds context & shows which areas are high engagement, contested or loved, and which don't excite as much. Being able to cite specific pieces is better than most blogs permits. The granularity of threads is better than wall of texts, for me, and enables more interesting interactions. It's a richer online medium, and in my view, that's cool.
I hope over time we can start to see ActivityPub/Mastadon start to allow blogging like things that also boast more interactive capabilities than traditional blogs. Blog posts that are shareable on standards-based social media protocols, where commenting is also standards-based social media protocols, would be a huge lift, would allow for some of the memetic virality that has allowed the social media Walled Gardens to team with activity.
Making things based on standard protocols also allows for a choice of clients. Such that we can tackle the "blogs aren't realtime" challenge (which also talks about for example comments, another handled via our existing protocols!), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34231569
Understanding some of the genetic makeup of Twitter & social media & trying to recapture some of the capabilities we had is important in transitioning away. I worry that "start a fucking blog", while spirited & heart-in-the-right-place, suggests a lesser path, a path that isn't as ambitious as is mandatory for survival & thriving.
They seem fine for lengthy prose. You probably aren't going to write that many long-form blogs anyway — in the vicinity of several hundreds, maybe. After many years. So that's fine.
But what I've discovered about my writing habits is that I mostly tend to write short notes, about the size of a Hacker News comment. And those can easily number in thousands after several years of writing.
So how well is a static site generator suited for this? Do I want to build thousands of pages every time I start the site locally? I probably don't. But I can't find a reasonable static-site generator that will only build the requested pages locally, and build everything when deployed.
It's probably also silly to pre-generate a static html page for every such short posted note.
What's the most appropriate solution for such a writing pattern? Bite the bullet and set up a Wordpress or a Mastodon instance? That's a bit depressing.
Now, replace Jekyll with any SSG and let a tool handle the build (Netlify, Vercel, CloudFlare Pages).
For your specific tweet/comment like post, I remember deploying quite a few instances of something called "P2" from WordPress for internal department updates, team updates etc.
WordPress P2: https://wordpress.org/themes/p2/
* A desktop app for creating static blogs, local preview, generates assets, optional deploy directly to Vercel. [1]
* A cron job which reads the paragraphs of a Notion page. Currently only generates an Atom/RSS feed from each paragraph. Inspired by [2], currently no source available.
Take a look at Astro[1]. Astro comes with a development server and it will not build a thing unless you want it to.
Also, in contrast to classic static site generators Astro relies on components instead of templates which reduces cognitive complexity dramatically (to me anyway).
[1]: https://astro.build/
But yeah, its syntax, with an out-of-the-box support of typescript, looks more enticing than Eleventy's nunjucks or webc, or its serverless plugin. Good to know that Astro doesn't prerender all pages in dev mode either.
[1] https://lucasdicioccio.github.io/dhall-section-demo.html
Ask yourself, though. Who benefits most from maximizing those indicators, the content author, or the service which provides the author the free platform? Is it any coincidence that the metrics promoted and provided by the platforms are the same ones that they use to maximize their ad revenue?
We know the platforms use a variety of means to influence audiences to keep coming back, why don't we examine how much the platforms use those same means to influence the creators to come back? Doesn't that little dopamine hit from having your tweet retweeted or "liked" influence the author? And if those hits are parceled out stochastically like Skinner box rewards, who is dependent on who?
It now powers sites like my own blog (https://breckyunits.com/), knowledge bases like PLDB.com, and our first new public domain daily newspaper called the Long Beach Pub (https://longbeach.pub/1-3-2023.html).
You only pay for the domain name. The hosting and traffic are free.
Blogger has been online since 1999 btw. It isn't going anywhere and I say this with confidence. My confidence comes from me personally looking for Blogger blogs and finding old ones (from 1999) that are still updated today. Google would not dare take those peoples medium, it would be an outrage. Some of them get tens of comments on each post.
There are also some huge Blogger blogs, for example like this one: https://www.surrenderat20.net/ that has thousands of comments on each post. Imagine how much traffic that blog pulls.
It is true Google has over the years stripped Blogger of some functionalities but it is still the most flexible Blogging platform. Why? Because you can add custom HTML, Javascript and CSS to each and every individual post/page or site-wide, category-wide etc (try doing that for free on wordpress dot com).
They also allow adult content if you can believe it. Their content policy is quite lax.
And then, while I used to be an ok writer back in the day for my age group, it's been a very hot minute since I last wrote to be read.
How do you replicate that (the newsletter bit) as part of a standalone blog easily? To me, starting a blog is no problem, connecting it with a larger audience is what's missing.
2. Insert "fuck"
3. Get a ton of votes+views
Their feelings on their other page sum my feelings completely: https://thewebisfucked.com/
Nowadays, podcasts and social media sites try to do that, but it's impromptu and attention-thirsty wannabes, bad actors, promotional bullshit, nation state actors crowding the space. If you got good words, people will read.
I think I will start my blog
However, it doesn't give us new information, and might be an ad for Netlify (I did not find evidence for that in a cursory whois search, basing on it pushing Netlify twice).
1) Make the content I would like to see more of on the Internet, for its own sake.
2) I think my interests are really cool, a few others on the planet may also think so and find benefit.
3) My blog is a public notebook. So why post publicly? It forces me to organize my thoughts in keeping with the principle that “if you can’t teach it to another, you don’t know it.”
4) The narrow focus will never make me rich or famous so my blog isn’t confused with a job - it’s just a replacement for a lack of a local community that cares as much as I do about something.
Now people are reverting back to blogs and instant messaging.
Why? because social networks were a mistake.
I envisioned creating a few articles a month, but look at the pathetic state of it! I actually have a number of articles queued up, but it's a matter of finding time to select pictures, size them, and finally publish it.
I am using the 11ty blog engine and hosting on GitHub. I like the setup quite a bit, I just need to set aside a day to my content published.
This is an honest question. My initial thought is by being wide open you can write about anything that interests you, but that could also backfire and lead to constant reconsideration.
* having something to blog about
* having/arranging time to write and (if needed) edit
If you have a CI/CD pipeline of any complexity at all for a blog, then either you are sharing infrastructure with other projects¹ or you are overcomplicating things!²
--
[1] perhaps your blog is largely related to dev so shares your dev/documentation resources
[2] no judgement: I'm capable of overcomplicating everything!
What if you want introduce some diagramming or Latex rendering in your blog ? In this case, if your original tooling doesn't support, you need to re-invent somehow .
Then you are starting to step beyond what I was referring to as “a simple blog” (text, formatting, maybe some pictures or SVG).
Though there are options that don't require a CI/CD pipeline. Depending on what Latext you need MathJax may do the trick (just include the JS in your standard page header, and drop the Latex code straight in inline where needed as per their standard example: https://jsbin.com/?html,output. There are similar charting options like mermaid too. I don't know of inline charting options off the top of my head but I expect several exist.
My point is, the "hard" part, is mostly master your tooling right ? Because you want simplicity in customizing your output .
b)First invent the universe
1) let you pick an available domain name
2) set up the hosting, the blog CMS, its authentication, and all the routing for you
3) show you the cost, and just let you pay it?
Because as much as I can do all this stuff manually, that would be pretty sweet to automate, for the folks who just want to "start a fucking blog" and not have to become sysadmins
If you go the Netlify route, YMMV.
If you don’t want all that fucking around, start a fucking Bear Blog instead[1].
In all seriousness, I don’t understand the reason to use profanity in the name like that. Everyone knows that a large percentage of the population is turned off by profanity. Why limit your potential audience right out of the gate?
> This is fucking satire. This site was heavily influenced by the geniuses behind Motherfucking Website and Better Motherfucking Website. Although this site has been created as a bit of fun, the message behind it is a serious one
There are dozens and dozens of blog posts telling folks they should create a blog. Plenty of options. This one has character & flavor. It doesn't detract from the others who take it more seriously. I for one think it's sad to brring such a dampened, limited, negative perspective to bear over something many people find pretty funny & silly. It's fucking epic. It's a good option, amid many other's also advocating for starting a blog.
When Elon came and made the platform semi-usable, sometimes reversing the censorship game, everyone freaked out.
I once thought that was funny, at least. Now, I think it's infuriating and really dumb.
There should be no double standards. You either allow free speech or you don't.
I was thinking the same thing, was this person in such an outrage when Jack Dorsey was at the helm?
So yeah, nothing to do with the shit show that is Elon Musk, it's just good timing. :-)
May I ask, what was it about Google+ that you enjoyed?
Choosing to be your own platform is a form of empowering ones ideas. And if reach is a concern, post a damn link.
With that in mind, some general tips:
- Set aside dedicated time for writing on a regular basis. Maybe the same time each day or some number of days each week.
- Depending on the type of writing you're doing (technical vs creative vs casual, etc), a writing routine may help. For example, you might warm up with brainstorming or free writing. Maybe even before that, you set goals for the writing session, etc. I find this helps a lot because often the writing just flows as long as you can get past the first hurdle. The basic idea is to do whatever you can to avoid just staring with a blank canvas each time you start.
- Break up the writing into chunks, e.g. number of pages or even words.
Looks more like a landing page trying to look like a blog.
Also, I get it...
> This is fucking satire
I'd rather keep posting these fucking answers and get fucking downvotes instead
....Of course, its quite nice that present-day trend is picking it up a tad. :-)
($15/mo basic tier, and if I drag the slider to 20k 'members' the 'creator' tier is at $149/mo billed annually).
But that probably means that they are currently not a good fit for someone looking to move their Twitter presence to a blog.
Not speaking for the project here. Just what I understood from conversations with devs.
Though Ghost would be overkill for a really simple blog, despite its staring point as intending to be just enough tech to host content well (a reaction to what WordPress has/had become).
This is very strange since the author of this website actually has his own blog which is nicely designed, but for some reason he really went out of his way to make this page into a mess.
Which is even stranger because you'd think he'd put all his skill into a page dedicated to reaching out and actually convincing people
This page on the other hand looks and feels really terrible, so I don't get how anyone could be convinced of starting a blog from this
And those are objectively bad enough to call the site terrible according to which metric?
The law says, that you can get fined up to 50k€ for that. Obviously it will very likely not be that much for a measly blog. You need to put your address, if you have any advertisement on your website, do anything journalistic, or, if you are organizing any kind of group on German territory. Probably some more conditions which I forgot.
Want to make a post about your favorite restaurants? Oh, that could be seen as an ad! Better not post it! Want to rant a little about something silly some politician has done? Ooops! That could be seen as journalist activity! Want to post a datetime and location of the next meeting of your favorite hobby group? Organizing people on German territory!
You can see it is very easy to make a mistake. Not likely, that anyone will even find your blog or care, but also not nice to run the risk. On the other hand I don't want everyone on the Internet to know where I live, so I cannot put an "Impressum" there either. I have read up on things like: "Can I put a post box there?" and similar ideas, but there have been cases in which courts decided, that this is not sufficient any longer.
If you have an ENS domain you can spin up a quick blog using that and IPFS. For example, mine is werdy.eth.limo
These hi-tech firms aren't much different than state-owned companies where a bunch of "workforce" consists of rulling-party members sitting all day every day, doing nothing.
At this point it's overused.
Imagine believing this in 2023.
I think it's pretty obvious that a self-published blog provides more freedom to publish what and how you want, and that's valuable, even if it's not absolute freedom.
I mean it’s a fun endeavour by itself but if the point is really to communicate you’re 100% better of using one of the numerous blogging / microblogging option.
or Reddit? oooopsie... I'm banned again.
If you keep backups you can always go on your own in case that happens, and you also get the controversy to boost interest.
Assuming that's something a blog's author cares about. But even if that is, you can always share a link to social media.
That's because 99.99% of the time people don't break the rules, because they know it's easy to get banned.
> you'll benefit from mass viewership
Probably not. It works for some, but take a truly random sample of Twitter users and calculate the percentage that have more than 10,000 followers.
Several hundred, of which maybe 20 have something to say on any given day.
RSS is awesome.
Yes, it is fun and history has shown a different picture so far than "just use one of the services."