[HN Gopher] The joys and sorrows of maintaining a personal website ___________________________________________________________________ The joys and sorrows of maintaining a personal website Author : airhangerf15 Score : 107 points Date : 2022-05-06 17:29 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (cheapskatesguide.org) (TXT) w3m dump (cheapskatesguide.org) | noizejoy wrote: | My main detriments to publishing on the web continue to be: | | The less obvious and not already widely covered stuff is very | situation dependent. i.e. Most advice I could share is incredibly | nuanced and some of it may flip 180 degrees, depending on the | particular context of the person looking for advice or help. -- | And I don't necessarily pre-think all possible situations - which | is also a big human problem, when making software or laws and | everything in between. | | The "right" advice changes over time, because everything from | technology to human value systems evolve ever more quickly. So | today's wisdom may end up tomorrow's deadly sin. And when the | Internet doesn't forget, a well meaning post today may become a | big mortgage on the future. | pcmaffey wrote: | Advice rots. As you describe, it's context specific. | | Stories on the other hand, are ageless. When well written they | take on a life of their own. | bachmeier wrote: | > After I had written my first 30 articles, I thought I had said | everything I wanted to say. That was three years ago, and yet, | somehow I have continued putting out fairly regular content. | | Finding things to write about is not the bottleneck (for me). I'm | willing to bet I could make a list of 1000 things to write about | if I cared to make such a list. The reason I don't post more on | my website is because it's rarely the best use of my time. I | would create some value with another post, but not a lot, so I | focus on higher-value tasks. | [deleted] | thaway2839 wrote: | The destruction of RSS greatly damaged the Blogging ecosystem. | | It used to be that if I followed a /. link to an article on a | blog that I enjoyed, I'd immediately subscribe to their RSS feed. | I'd made a collection of a few hundred blogs related to computer | science alone this way. | | At the time I was on a mac, and NetNewsWire was THE RSS reader of | choice (backed by Google Reader for syncing feed info) and every | morning I'd click on the folder which housed those 100s of blogs, | and would probably find 10-20 posts, skim through them in | minutes, only reading those that seemed interesting to me in | depth. NNN also made it extremely easy to open the post on the | original website in a background tab, so I'd keep opening them in | the background if I wanted to read it, and then just go through | all the background tabs. | | It was an amazingly efficient system of following hundreds of | independent blogs that were offering uncurated first person | information. | | I haven't found anything today that comes close to recreating | that system, and I can't imagine even finding the kinds of | articles I did through this process (an example...I had an HP | MediaSmart server, and one day someone randomly posted a How to | on replacing the CPU on it with a newer CPU...it was an easy | process that cost me about $7 to buy the compatible faster chip | on eBay, and a couple of dollars for the heatsink gel). And lo | and behold, a week later, everything was running so much better. | | Changing the CPU on the Mediasmart server was something I | wouldn't even have considered searching for, and even if I did, | I'm not sure Google would have turned up anything useful. | lelandfe wrote: | Dunno why so much of this is in past tense - everything you | named still works the same. I use NNN every day (though my | reading list is smaller: around 30). If there's a blog that | doesn't have a feed, I'll just use a scraper to make one for | me. Works like a charm! | dflock wrote: | RSS didn't die, though? I still do this and it works fine? | | This is optional - but I use Miniflux as a locally hosted RSS | server, so that I can keep the feed list etc on there and | access it from my phone, desktop etc... using my client of | choice. | eropple wrote: | _> RSS didn 't die, though? I still do this and it works | fine?_ | | If your publishing platform supports it, RSS is still pretty | good. On the other hand, I'm building my current blog with | NextJS (both to learn it and because I like React a lot more | than I do the Wordpress loop) and I am making sure to do | RSS...but it's a lot harder than it used to be. | kenniskrag wrote: | Which client do you use? I'm searching one for android. | crtasm wrote: | I'm pretty happy with Handy News Reader, gets used every | day. Appears to be on the play store as well as on f-droid. | dzikimarian wrote: | I installed miniflux recently and for now I'm using its web | interface, shortcut to which I pinned to my launcher. It's | very fast, so possibly I'll stay just with it. | [deleted] | ufmace wrote: | > The destruction of RSS greatly damaged the Blogging | ecosystem. | | Since when is RSS "destroyed"? I still use it every day. | | Okay Google Reader specifically died. But honestly it wasn't | all that great. There are dozens of other RSS readers that | still work fine. | dhosek wrote: | What bugged me was when Apple removed RSS from Safari. I used | to have a menubar list of sites that I would read regularly | and I could go to the bottom and select open all in RSS and | read everything. Having to use a dedicated RSS reader really | feels like a step backwards. | the_third_wave wrote: | > Having to use a dedicated RSS reader really feels like a | step backwards. | | Not if you use a web-based RSS reader (I use Nextcloud News | for this purpose) since that is always just one link away | on any browser you might happen to use. This is far more | convenient than having your 'feeds' in a specific browser | on a specific device. | ocdtrekkie wrote: | It's noteworthy this blogger actually tells me if I don't | change the settings on my RSS feed reader, he will ban me from | reading his site. I decided to subscribe, but this is the first | time I've ever had to change the update interval in my feed | reader. | | This isn't really a shining example of good encouragement for | people to use RSS feeds. | SCUSKU wrote: | I was born in 1997, so I wasn't really around or aware of the | whole "hacker" scene. But this to me seems to be some of the most | genuine expression of the "hacker" ethos. Doing things out of | passion, stoically, knowing that your efforts will most likely | fall upon deaf ears. But still putting out a signal into the vast | ocean of information on the internet, hoping that someone with a | similar mind will find you and connect. It is beautiful, and it | is also deeply tragic. The society we find ourselves living in | has stripped away the ability for humans to fully embrace their | humanity. Oftentimes doing so is is stigmatized, or even a crime. | Personal websites, and blog posts like this are like matches | being lit in a pitch black forest. I feel lost, and alone in this | modern day life, but I see, even if just an ephemeral glimpse, | that there is someone out there, somewhere, struggling, like me, | living. And this gives me hope. Thank you for this blog post, it | has brought me joy today. | severak_cz wrote: | I think this is really different in other countries. | | For example here in Czech republic we have lot of reasonably | cheap hosting companies and whole backyard industry of small | companies and individuals willing to create website for you. | Barrera wrote: | > After I had written my first 30 articles, I thought I had said | everything I wanted to say. That was three years ago, and yet, | somehow I have continued putting out fairly regular content. This | amazes me, because I do not know how I am doing it. Ideas just | come, and many of them are actually good, meaning they have value | to readers. Though most of my best writing does not attract | exceptionally large numbers of readers, at times when I have been | very lucky, a few of my articles have brought tens of thousands | each to my website. | | This is an under-appreciated part of regular writing. If you want | new ideas, one of the best ways to do that is to write. One way | to uncover progressively deeper ideas is to stick to the same | topic. This is not easy because in the back of your head may be a | voice telling you to try to get more readers. It's a diversion. | Go deep instead. The Internet is filled with surface-level | discussions of just about every topic. What it will never have | enough of are deep-dives written by an expert. | papandada wrote: | There's a writer (I want to say Annie Dillard, but I'm not | finding it) who said -- don't store up all your best ideas for | a rainy day, because invariably when you do open that box, | you'll find it empty. Only and always work on the best you have | at the moment. | lettergram wrote: | First, you shouldn't blog for others. I did it to index my | knowledge, practice writing and document my thoughts. I almost | consider them my public notes. | | I'm in the category of a casual personal blogger. That said, Ill | have articles get >100k unique views once or twice a year, | average 25k views a month. I share the articles and people like | them. That's about it. Some of my niche stuff ranks on Google and | DuckDuckGo because I did something people found interesting | (hence the regular traffic). | | My last update was Feb 7, 2022 so it's not as if I'm active. And | my most detailed analysis https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by- | the-numbers/ actually receives relatively low traffic (it's a | censored / touchy subject and took me six weeks to write). | However, it was something I did to understand a topic myself and | have shared with others as it's come up. | | I took joy in writing it and frankly assumed it was a purely | intellectual exercise. If you go for clicks, you don't pick | censored / deranked content, but imo that's where interesting | topics actually are. | | Anyway, a bit of a ramble. I just find it interesting people | start blogs for traffic. Instead it should be intellectual | exploration first, then sharing second. Those are the blogs I've | always enjoyed anyway. | | If you want traffic you need a regular topic you cover. Most | personal blogs are life events, which is covered by social media | now. Blogs are for long-form content and can cover more | practically what I would call essays or research topics. | FourthProtocol wrote: | I note that many blog on their personal web site. I decided | against that back in the early 2000's, when it got popular - I | just didn't want to face not having a clue what to write about | next. The site's always been hosted with a commercial hosing | provider. I've travelled a bit, and that meant my site could live | on even if I moved yet again. | | So I just use it to write down stuff I thought inetresting. I add | new stuff very occasionally, and refer to it often, to this day. | It's expanded (and sometimes contracted) with non-work stuff | (hobbies, photos for the overseas family - although I could do | more on that front). | | And so I have no real expectation of myself to continually | provide new content, or keep up with the latest hosting software | and [at home] infrastructure. It receives lots of traffic for the | 4x4 guide I wrote in 1998, and the consulting reference pages. I | don't care for the traffic, but glad people find it useful. As | long as it remains useful to _me_ I 'll keep it going, and call | it a success. | AshamedCaptain wrote: | > The enemy possesses every advantage. Personal website owners | are nearly always just ordinary individuals. They often have | glacially slow upload bandwidths, [...]. The enemy has seemingly | unlimited funds, massive resources, acres of server farms, | | One example of this is Googlebot "attacks". I have a personal, | mostly static website that I've been serving from a home | connection for over 25 years, upgrading the hardware and moving | it with me as I relocated. Out of these 25 years, Google has been | number #1 user of bandwidth, CPU time, and as a consequence the | #1 generator of headaches. | | During the mid 2000s I had numerous problems keeping the site | online since the Google crawler would just effectively DDoS it, | sending tens of concurrents requests completely ignoring the | Crawl-Delay in robots.txt (and most of robots.txt, fwiw). Mind | you, this was not the most powerful hardware you could find, | since it had to be quite low power to be left 24h on, but it was | perfectly able to serve the handful of connections per hour I | expect out of my website. | | Obviously your only alternative is to just ban the entire Google | IP range and as a consequence disappear from the Internet. | Nowadays the problem is less noticeable because my 1-2W server | can handle the onslaught brought by Googlebot just fine, but they | still ignore the Crawl-Delay. | hinkley wrote: | I really wonder if this is an area that would be best served by | creating a cooperative, allowing you to spread some of this | knowledge and troubleshooting across a larger number of humans. | | But that's fundamentally a social problem, and the field of | software is nothing if not consistent in its resolve to try | every other solution before resorting to emotional work. Co-ops | that try to come up with a set of rules to handle all | situations end up failing, because rules-lawyering turns into a | game to be won by some people, at the expense of everyone else | (see also, HOAs). | japhyr wrote: | I just made the first new post on my personal blog in almost two | years. Because it's a self-hosted site that I step away from for | long periods of time, I accidentally rsynced my entire .git/ repo | and some supporting scripts before finding the simple deploy.sh | file I wrote last time I messed things up. :) | user_7832 wrote: | The timing of this post is quite impeccable - just a few days ago | I finally went ahead and paid for a domain, to set up a personal | blog (despite having decided to make one several years back). I | would like to ask fellow HN bloggers, what were some of the | unexpected things you encountered in your process? (I'm more | curious about the experience, though I am also interested about | more technical details.) | scottlilly wrote: | I've had my personal domain since 1999. It was originally hand- | coded HTML, but has been WordPress for at least the last eight | years. | | Back in 2014 I wrote a beginner's guide to C#, with the lessons | building a very simple (non-graphical) role playing game. It | was mostly to show the thinking behind starting out very | simple, with the basics of objects, and eventually build a | program that is larger and "complete". | | It got a little popular and I've received quite a few | messages/comments from people who've told me the lessons helped | them understand things better in their programming courses at | college or code camps. Those messages have been a lot more | fulfilling than being coder #12 on $BigCo's multimillion- | dollar, multi-year project. | | It's also a nice thing to point to when interviewing. Just like | a public GitHub repo, I doubt most interviewers take more than | a cursory glance at it, but it is a way to stand out from the | crowd of candidates who don't have a technical blog. | | I've had times when I've burnt out and haven't posted for a | year or more. Other times, I get a burst of energy and write | every day. There is a bit of pressure to feel like I should be | writing and posting. And, since I have programming guides, | there are occasional support questions to answer (especially | when Microsoft changes Visual Studio or moves from .NET | Framework to .NET Core then to .NET 5/6). But, it usually | doesn't take too long to deal with that. | | On the technical side, it has been a bit of a pain to go | through web hosts every few years. The hosting service | eventually gets bought out, service quality goes down, or the | site gets slow (and support says, "It looks OK to me"), etc. | user_7832 wrote: | Thank you for your insights. I think the variability in | writing is something I'm also going to personally experience. | That feeling of satisfaction and happiness sounds great - | good for you, and also thank you for offering such useful | content for free! | AndrewStephens wrote: | Congratulations on your new blog - if you already have content | up consider posting it here. | | I wrote [0] and [1] with people like you in mind: | | [0] | https://sheep.horse/2017/4/so_you_want_to_start_an_unpopular... | | [1] | https://sheep.horse/2017/4/some_additional_advice_for_those_... | BaseballPhysics wrote: | Well, I can say, as a person who's been running a blog since | 2003 or so, if you're planning a long-running online presence, | building a site based on technology that makes it relatively | easy to move to different technology platforms is really | important. a) it future-proofs your site so you can move as the | technology moves, but also, b) the odds are you'll end up with | content that's easier to back up, manipulate, etc. | | The first iteration of my blog was based on an old wiki engine, | and the beauty of that engine was that, while the markup format | was unique, the data was stored in flat text files that I could | easily manipulate. | | Some number of years back, now, I moved to a static site | generator that uses Markdown as the source format, and since I | was dealing with flat files, I actually had a fighting chance | of making the switch fairly easily. | | And now that everything is just Markdown, I can version control | it with git, back it up easily, etc. And again, if I decide to | switch technologies in the future, I can do that because the | content is stored in a format that's very easy to manipulate. | | And thinking very long-term, this kind of approach ensures that | archiving your digital legacy will be a lot easier, since the | content isn't tightly bound to a specific technology. | user_7832 wrote: | Thanks for your comment, that (tech getting depreciated) is | something I hadn't consciously considered. I also think | Markdown is a really solid idea for anything that doesn't | need to be very fancy (like most blogs). | noizejoy wrote: | Well put - and maybe also worth noting, that the same issue | also applies to media formats. | z3t4 wrote: | Web hosting is "economy of scale" which means hosting one site | cost a lot, but hosting +1 site costs very little for that extra | site, so if you are technical enough to run your own server, also | host other people's web sites! | readingnews wrote: | I have run my own site, on my own domain (with email!) since | 1994. The domain was lost and recaptured in 1998, so I suppose by | the registrar, since 1998... | | I go through spurts of updating and then not updating it. Some | parts of this article resonate with me... is it worth it? Does | anyone care? Will anyone ever see it? At the same time, if you | view it as an item for ones self, then all of those pressures go | away. | | I think people do not realize the power they have (or they always | make it out to be a much larger problem than it is) to run ones | own server (perhaps both web and email). Before you flame, I have | been setting up web/email for decades, and there are plenty of | online tutorials (I wrote a few). The real point is that even | with a little effort, the rewards are interesting. It is not for | everyone, but I think the DIY spirit has a place here (in web | pages and personal systems on the net). | | Sorry for rambling, I feel compelled to say something... so many | comments in other threads turn into "you can never keep up with a | web or email server". I feel this person needs kudos for showing | that it is really not too difficult. | fsiefken wrote: | Hi readingnews, I see the benefits of creating your running | your own site/blog/bliki/digital-garden on a hosted or even | your own server. You can tweak and make it into whatever you | want. But what's the joy or reward of running your own mail | server? I can imagine the feeling of being independent. But I | imagine it also creates a bit of stress in keeping the email | server running, spam free and secure? | noizejoy wrote: | One person's stress is another one's bliss | readingnews wrote: | > I can imagine the feeling of being independent. | | Seriously, this is a total stress reliever. A ton of things | are tied to email. What am I paying gmail or fastmail or whom | ever? Nothing? Oh, so they can turn it off whenever, or lock | me out or whatever, for no reason. Not with my own server. | | > But I imagine it also creates a bit of stress in keeping | the email server running, spam free and secure? | | Again, I used to maintain the gentoo HOWTO on | postfix/amavisd-new/spamassassin before the wiki crashed and | someone else redid it. I have setup so many corporate wide | spam filters... there is no stress in it. | the_third_wave wrote: | No stress and hardly any work once you get the configuration | right - which usually comes down to configuring a smart | server for outgoing mail, one or more domains for incoming | mail and some form of spam filtering - Spamassassin being a | good candidate. Make sure your user's passwords are up to | snuff and the software is up to date (which can largely be | automated) and the total maintenance time is usually quite a | bit less than 8 hours per year. | | * Exim or Postfix as MTA | | * Dovecot as MDA, add managesieve and you'll be able to | sort/filter/file mail based on just about any combination of | criteria | | * Spamassassin to keep out all those offers you can't refuse | | * Roundcube or Rainloop for web mail, looking at the same | IMAP account as you use on your other devices | | I've never had any of my servers 'hacked' in those 26+ years. | Jach wrote: | Many things tech people do are basically equivalent to having a | little garden in the back yard. Gardening isn't for everyone | either. Especially if weeds keep you up at night, or the idea | that an apache 0-day might drop any second and bots might take | over your old LAMP site before you get around to ssh'ing in and | updating it, these sorts of pastimes are probably not for | you... | the_third_wave wrote: | I've been running my own services since around 1996 and have | never looked back. The scare stories told by those who either | can not or do not want to run their own services and for some | reason feel the need to dissuade others from doing so are just | that, scare stories. Running your own services may not be for | everyone but then again, what is? | | From the 486DX2-66 under the stairs via the Pentium-90-under- | the-stairs, the BP-6 with dual overclocked Celeron-333s, the | re-purposed Virgin Webplayer when I emigrated and needed | something small and light while looking for a house, the Intel | SS4200 and now a DL380G7 (under the stairs, of course), from | Slackware via Redhat to Debian, from a hand-crafted Sendmail | config to Exim, from a time when spam was non-existent to a | time when spam is something which seems to bother others but | which is stopped in its tracks at the gates it has been one | unbroken chain of enjoying the freedom of being in control. | jasonthorsness wrote: | I struggled for some time with maintaining my own site (in | profile), as it felt so disconnected from the conversation. | Eventually I realized what I really wanted was a more | customizable/flexible version of Twitter that could do things | like host WASM - so I recreated my site to be more of a | complement to Twitter threads rather than a standalone | experience. The article author seems to be taking a strong stand | against corporate web but I think a highly integrated yet fully | owned personal site could be a good alternative approach. | sircastor wrote: | There was a brief time where I thought i could write regularly | and make money off of having a commercialized personal site. It | turned out that it wasn't for me. I pay the bills every year and | I write somewhere between 0 and 5 posts a year. They're usually | write-ups about projects I have completed, or interests I'm | pursuing. | | It's really nice to not have to worry about how popular something | is or isn't on my site. And occasionally I'll have someone send | me a note saying thank you for some helpful piece of information | they found there. | cturtle wrote: | > And occasionally I'll have someone send me a note saying | thank you for some helpful piece of information they found | there. | | This is related to one of the reasons I like having a personal | website. Countless times I've found answers or learned | something cool from another's personal website, and I hope that | I can help other through my efforts. | | The original article mentioned something about not being able | to change the world through a personal website. You can have an | impact in a persons life though, and I think that makes it | worth it. | ghaff wrote: | A few years ago I flirted with the idea of doing a more serious | and focused travel-oriented site and went so far as to get a | Wordpress site for it but the ambition lasted for about a | month. | | My site is mostly pretty static. There's a fairly nice | templated front-end but the actual content is just on some | fairly simple, mostly hand done HTML. My actual blog is on | Blogger but a lot more of my content goes in other places these | days. That may well change in the future (again). | throwawayboise wrote: | The cost of a VPS where you can host stuff like this is far | less than a Netflix subscription. You can just do it for the | entertainment or satisfaction that it provides without worrying | about what it costs or "monetizing" it. | kaashif wrote: | > And occasionally I'll have someone send me a note saying | thank you for some helpful piece of information they found | there. | | I do exactly the same thing! And for exactly the same reasons! | | I just occasionally write to crystallise my thoughts. Sometimes | I get insights just by writing up a project, in the same way I | sometimes think of an answer while writing a question into | StackExchange. | gernb wrote: | My path was perl -> php -> wordpress -> static generator + disqus | and dealing with spam pre disqus (for me, wordpress' anti-spam | features didn't work, kismet, etc...) | | I'm sure there are solutions but the problem I have with a static | generator is that unlike wordpress I have no online preview. Sure | I can run the generator on my local machine, even setup some | watch build so I can update and refresh but I use 7 machines | regularly. With wordpress, any machine let me draft a new post | and pick it up else where and preview it but ATM I've lost that | feature. | | Maybe (it's hosted on github), I could setup a staging repo and | have it build PRs to a staging site but a full PR is way more | work than just typing and clicking 'preview' in wordpress. To | add, my site does some processing that would be not be previews | just using github's markdown preview in the editor. | | I don't know if that's why I blog less than I used to but it is | arguably friction. If I think of something to write I need to be | in front of the correct computer with stuff synced and setup and | if I don't finish I need to check in the unfinished article in | some draft position, then later check it out on some other | machine, and finally when it's done, move it to a folder that is | used in the build. | | It also takes me serious time. A typical post would take 4-8hrs. | Write, proofread, edit, add pictures or diagrams. Just barfing | thoughts out is twitter/facebook. | | Otherwise, I think I just have less to write. I started blogging | in the 90s selfishly, it was way more fun when it felt special. | Now everyone writes (twitter, facebook, medium, etc...) so not | nearly as special. | z3t4 wrote: | I've solved it for my own needs by making https://webide.se/ | which is an web based editor with a Linux shell and my | homegrown static site generator with live preview. If you host | your repo on Github try | https://webide.se/?github=/githubuser/repo/ | Tijdreiziger wrote: | Why not go back to WordPress? It sounds like it was working | well for you. It may not be the shiniest tech anymore, but | often, boring tech is good [1]. | | [1] https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology | rajlego wrote: | I wish more of the people posting about how they've had blogs for | decades would link the blogs | AndrewStephens wrote: | Does 1.5 decades count? [0] | | I even have a similar article about blogging (old but still | relevant, I think)[1] | | [0] https://sheep.horse/everything.html | | [1] | https://sheep.horse/2017/4/so_you_want_to_start_an_unpopular... | metalliqaz wrote: | Imagine going back to the nineties and saying "check out my | blog at sheep dot horse." | stock_toaster wrote: | Reminds me of that old SNL sketch: | https://snltranscripts.jt.org/99/99adillon.phtml/ | Jach wrote: | Part of the joy is finding them serendipitously on your own | though. Still, if you're not too fixated on the age and more | interested in a place being a personal site, here's a thread | with a random collection from a couple years ago: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22156868 | dhosek wrote: | I've had a continuously updated record of my reading since | 1995. It began as manually updated HTML and then I made a PHP | script to back it with a database. I never got around to | writing the admin page so I still update it with phpMyAdmin | after writing the entries in TextEdit. Some day, when I have | time, I may fix some of the CSS and other formatting issues, | but I think most of the traffic it gets is me using it to | refresh my memory about something I've read in the past. | | https://don.dream-in-color.net/books/ | rsolva wrote: | I can recommended BookWyrm for this! | WorldMaker wrote: | I've traced archeological layers remaining in my blog all the | way back to at least 1999. It's been on worldmaker.net and/or | blog.worldmaker.net since 2002 as I recall. For a period in the | 90s there was a "Zine" component, and the word "Blog" wasn't | even invented yet. There are some big lost layers from database | drops in the middle there. The most contiguous history seems to | start around November 2004, with the most recent migration from | databases to Git a "recent" 7 years ago in 2015. | | It's been a weird journey. | justinlloyd wrote: | I maintain a couple of personal websites, that aren't just | "portfolio of work", that are my day-to-day stream of | consciousness thoughts about things. | | I've maintained at least one diary-like personal website since | 1992-ish or 1993-ish when domains could only be registered with | one company, and cost a couple of hundred dollars, and you had to | talk to someone on the telephone to get one. I post about one | thought a day, sometimes two! | | And I've taken a lot of my "one thought a day" notes from | physical notebooks and transcribed them to my website, along with | photos of the notebook page. My collected thoughts go back to | 1973 or so. | | As a kid I didn't read or write too well, but I had a tape | recorder where I thought my thoughts (I had the idea from a Dr | Seuss book as I recall). I can listen to six year old me thinking | about things like how airplanes fly and why would a cup made of | stone float in water and realise just how dumb I was as I thought | about how these things work. But it is also interesting to look | back and go "wow! that's me! That's my thoughts and my voice and | my notes!" | | What helps with the writing is that I am under no allusions as to | ever making any kind of profit or being popular. It truly is | "just for me." | | Welcome to the end of the age of forgetting. | ilaksh wrote: | For me it is just hard to make a consistent effort to constantly | promote my own content. Generally what I am motivated to put out | there is deliberately contrarian, and that makes it even less | likely for people to be interested. But whatever the reasons, | after doing a couple of blog articles or pages and having almost | 0 interest or comments, or maybe one shallow comment, I usually | give up. There are just more interesting things to do with my | time and energy. | zafka wrote: | This makes me smile. I have been maintaining a personal ( and | sometimes business) website for over twenty years. I feel sort of | responsible for keeping that 90's vibe alive. | BaseballPhysics wrote: | I've been doing the same, and have found myself really | attracted to the ideas of the indie web. The internet is so | incredibly corporatized these days, and I feel like independent | blogs and websites are a critical bulwark that helps preserve | open spaces on the internet. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-06 23:00 UTC)