[HN Gopher] Own your work
___________________________________________________________________
Own your work
Author : josem
Score : 189 points
Date : 2023-04-02 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (josem.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (josem.co)
| podviaznikov wrote:
| love this. started to publish things on my personal site almost
| 10 years ago http://podviaznikov.com.
|
| I changed publishing tools so many times, but all the content
| still lives on the same domain name and I try to support same
| URLs.
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| Read most of the content here. You have a soothingly simple and
| brain-to-paper writing style I enjoy. Your essay called "Age of
| Questions" stuck with me. It's a similar frustration to one
| I've had with the world recently.
|
| https://podviaznikov.com/writings/age-of-questions
| podviaznikov wrote:
| what a compliment!
|
| I obviously cannot analyze my own style because that is my
| style and how I write so reflection from other people are so
| fascinating.
|
| And thank you for commenting on this specific essay. I've
| just read it again and unfortunately it still holds, almost 2
| years since it was published.
|
| But I think I am starting to develop my own tools to work
| against general tendencies at least in my personal life. I
| will think more about it!
| podviaznikov wrote:
| and curious what you currently think on this topic too.
| Specifically about solutions. At any level. Individual or
| societal.
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| I liked the first half more than the second half. I think
| you establish the problem very effectively, but in the
| second half your own indignation shines brighter than
| inquisition.
|
| I've yet to see an answer that satisfies me here. Many
| times, inquisition is indeed used as a plausibly deniable
| mask for ideology. Similarly, I don't think you or I will
| ever reasonably be free of our own personal ideologies.
|
| If I had a good answer, the post wouldn't be interesting
| to me. I could rattle off one of the common answers
| (technocracy, degrowth, investment in education,
| something something social media bad) but those seem
| tired and wrong to me. This kind of topic is one where
| it's easy to find the obvious target (this person, this
| system, this policy, this organisation) and start
| shunting blame, but that's ironically falling afoul of
| the problem itself circularly.
|
| There's no solution I stand behind with enough confidence
| to state it on a public forum like this.
|
| For now, I'll just have to keep asking questions.
| podviaznikov wrote:
| beautiful:) your answer is an essay in itself.
|
| I think I found a temporary shortcut/patch for myself
| that I can apply on the personal level.
|
| If I see something outrageous online I bring it and
| discuss in person with few people and we have more
| nuanced conversation and I see that questions are asked
| and it's not as crazy as online.
|
| And it calms be down and relaxes and gives me hope back.
| Because old dynamics - of asking questions and having
| nuanced conversations - they still work.
| pfoof wrote:
| I like your style of post titles: short, lowercase, concise
| podviaznikov wrote:
| thank you!
| pfoof wrote:
| That's what I do, because: too many to choose from, not enough
| flexibility. And hosting anything with server-side rendering like
| Wordpress does not bring too much benefits.
|
| Solution: Markdown in Git -> HTML -> Firebase Hosting over own
| domain (easy to migrate and replace)
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I mostly agree with the article. I use social media to promote
| what is on my website, my books, etc.
|
| I do use Blogger though. Twice I have switched to self hosting on
| my domain, and on my web site using Jeckal. Both times I switched
| back for convenience.
| Animats wrote:
| "Own your own stuff" - Joan Jett's advice to new musicians.
| LiquidPolymer wrote:
| Also my advice to photographers just starting out.
| dhosek wrote:
| Blogspot has disabled a number of backend services so that it's
| no longer compatible with, e.g., MarsEdit. I had one last blog I
| was still updating on a blogspot site that I just moved over to
| its own domain because of this.
| thih9 wrote:
| I did that. It was a pain.
|
| In my case most of engagement happened on social media, and I saw
| little benefit from my website; so eventually I stopped updating
| my webpage and started posting directly to social media
| platforms.
| japhyr wrote:
| I'm writing on Substack now, because I really like the ecosystem
| at this point. But I'm also well aware that they could tank it
| like Medium did, or close up shop at any point. So I have a
| recurring task in my issue tracker to make a full backup. One of
| the reasons I'm willing to build on Substack at this point is
| because of the ability to dump the most meaningful data -
| subscribers and posts.
|
| That said, the dumped data is not in a format that can be just
| uploaded to a different platform, or to my own site. That's not
| an issue for me, because I can write a little code that will
| transform the posts exactly how I need them for upload to a
| different platform, or my own site. When I end up needing to do
| this, I'll probably add custom styling that will look better than
| Substack's anyway, particularly in reference to code blocks.
|
| I feel for nontechnical people. How do you decide where to invest
| your time? What do you do when the platform shifts in a bad
| direction, or closes entirely? AI tools will probably help a lot
| of people in this situation, if they were good about maintaining
| backups in the first place. I imagine "Can you convert my
| Substack archive to a format that will work on x_new_platform"
| would probably be a useful prompt.
| shmde wrote:
| Yes please. It's quite surprising to see a company like Netflix
| and Airbnb using Medium for their tech blogs. They have the
| world's best web engineering teams and they use Medium for their
| tech blogs ? Just why ? I hate their font sizes their font
| heights. Just looks so amateurish.
| jmmv wrote:
| I've gone through various iterations of my blog/site. I started
| in LiveJournal back in the day, then moved to Blogger, and then
| tested the waters with Medium. Eventually, I concluded the same
| as the author: that I had to own my content in my own site, but
| that it was OK to use other established platforms for
| redistribution. And this is why I haven't jumped onto the
| Substack bandwagon.
|
| I described the thought process I went through here:
| https://jmmv.dev/2016/01/medium-experiment-wrapup.html and am
| currently using Hugo to build my site. Granted, creating content
| via Markdown is slightly more convoluted than using a web UI, but
| the feeling of control and future-proofness I get cannot be
| matched.
| tete wrote:
| Instead of a Wordpress Blog or something I'd go for something
| static. There is a couple of software solutions out there from
| everything to blogs to website. This has the benefit that you can
| be a lot more independent. As long as you have some copy
| somewhere you are fine. You can back it up easily and so on. If
| you use WP (and MySQL) a lot more things can go wrong. If the
| MySQL server, your wordpress can get hacked for some silly plugin
| you thought you needed, the hoster of it or whatever are
| unavailable you might lose it, you might lose your domain which
| can break stuff, you might forget to pay, etc.
|
| The idea here is something that allows you quick recreation and
| copying. You can just copy over static files. You can put it on
| your Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. and even on your external hard
| disk or whatever backup solution you use.
|
| Usually the main dynamic thing for writers is actually creating
| posts. So if that is some offline software that just spits out
| static files it becomes incredibly resilient.
|
| One might think static site generators, like Hugo, but there is
| also GUI applications that essentially equal what the admin of a
| blog or CMS see.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| What is old is new again
|
| This was basically the only option in the early 90s before
| geocities etc... So most of us who were on the web in the 90s did
| exactly that. Difference was, when you turned your computer off
| for the night, your site was down
|
| If you were really fancy you had a dedicated T1 line, but those
| were for rich people only
|
| I've been on my own domain for well over a decade and my CI
| process hasn't changed from "drag and drop a .html file written
| in notepad onto a BSD private-colo server via WinSCP"
|
| Literally never fails and my kb size pages don't crush anything.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Come on. ssh and vim! ;)
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| I used to have a page on Geocities back in the 90s, wasn't it
| just plain HTML, uploaded via FTP? Too long ago for me to
| remember...
| javajosh wrote:
| It's clear enough who owns a speech, and like the OP I'm in favor
| of hosting your own speeches (and essays). But who owns a
| conversation? Does this rugged individualist approach to hosting
| one's own work end the possibility of online discussion? Or do we
| just hold our nose and do the hypocritical thing and host
| comments - encouraging others to NOT own their work?
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Discussion is different from work. As you hint, there is no
| good way to co-own a discussion. Either you do it on neutral
| grounds and someone else owns it, or one party is the host and
| owner.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Everyone tends to give this advice of owning your own work
| through a central location and syndicating everywhere else. In
| other words, building your own platform.
|
| But generally speaking, sometimes you have to leverage platforms
| that have the current attention of the world as that is where you
| will drive engagement to your platform. It is fairly rare to just
| win organic search traffic especially starting out so you have to
| "hijack" some attention here and there where applicable.
|
| If you follow any notable person online who writes, creates
| content, etc, they are not afraid of going where everyone else is
| going whether that means they may have to be exclusive with their
| creations for awhile or whether that platform allows them to
| retain the rights to their creations.
|
| At the end of the day, it all helps them build an audience that
| they can take anywhere and there's many possibilities depending
| on what you'd like to do with that platform.
|
| Substack is that popular thing right now because it combines both
| the content and email list ownership that you can then take
| anywhere were it to go under tomorrow. It is a very accessible
| way to "own your work" today, especially for those who don't want
| to bother setting up a wordpress blog or similar.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| I think POSSE [0] solves this.
|
| [0] https://indieweb.org/POSSE
| thenerdhead wrote:
| You have to tailor content for each platform archetype.
| That's the only thing missing in this wiki.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Come catch me at avgcorrection.name where I put a disclaimer on
| the main page saying that my opinions are my own and don't
| reflect the opinions of my current employer _nor_ any of my
| previuos employers.
| paxys wrote:
| The underlying truth behind all such discussions is that too many
| people focus on the mechanics of content hosting and delivery but
| have nothing special to actually share. So they will spend all
| their time engineering the perfect blog site from scratch or
| moving from platform to platform looking for an ideological fit
| while no one really cares about consuming any of their output.
|
| My advice is always to forget about the details and just write.
| Set up a medium account, or substack, or blogspot, or get a VPS
| and install Wordpress or Ghost, or just tweet out your article
| line by line. If there is value in what you write then the
| readers will be there. And they will follow you if you decide to
| move your work elsewhere in the future.
| breck wrote:
| I must build static site compilers and markdown dialects so
| that my children may have liberty to write prose and poetry.
| lisp-pornstar wrote:
| This, and also "The blog is about literate programming, and
| the content of the blog is the code that produce the blog"
| fsckboy wrote:
| my blog is literary criticism of literate programming, and
| so most of the content of my blog is also the code from
| your blog.
| pjot wrote:
| For some the appeal _is_ the mechanics - it's fun to build
| something and put it on the web even if it's only for yourself.
| soneca wrote:
| > _"If there is value in what you write then the readers will
| be there"_
|
| I don't think that's true anymore. Of course, it depends on how
| you define "value", but I think having something "special" to
| share not always attract readers. Controversial takes, click
| bait, hate bait, exaggerated praising to a specific niche, all
| of this works better than "value" in your writing to get
| readers. Even if you stick to "value", you have to do it for
| months or years to get readers. So consistency seems to be more
| effective than said value too.
|
| I think that's similar to SEO. 5 to 10 years ago the common
| advice was that you should just do white hat SEO because Google
| would always catch you because they were so smart, thousands of
| the smartest engineers on earth against your silly tricks.
| Google would always won. But, now, it seems clear to me that
| black and grey hat SEO beats Google most of the time.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Part of the value in what is written is the author behind the
| writing and our understanding of their life and experiences.
| leviathant wrote:
| I've been running a blog on a Perl/flatfile static site
| generator (with MySQL bolted on later for search) since 1999.
| Made a few tweaks over the years, but the core of the same. Had
| lots of people over the years suggest better ways to run a
| blog, but none of them were getting the traffic I got (well,
| used to get), and none of their options are nearly as easy to
| use.
|
| If you do use a third party, please regularly download backups
| of your work. One of the reasons my blog was so popular was
| because it also has an archive of articles that I shamelessly
| copied from other sites (with attribution), most of which have
| since gone defunct, their content otherwise lost.
| pugets wrote:
| In college, I did my calculus homework on blank printer paper
| using Sharpie markers. I could only fit one integral per page,
| maybe two if I was lucky, so I'd turn in these 15-page stapled
| assignments. It was calculus all the same, and I got great
| grades. I think the purpose of this comment is to reinforce
| that the medium doesn't matter -- if you focus on the content
| itself, you'll progress.
| isomorph wrote:
| Why did you do that?
| alin23 wrote:
| Yep, completely agree with this. I wrote about how I created my
| blog workflow [1] so that I can write from my iPhone and easily
| publish notes. And it's a lot of work that on Substack you get
| for free.
|
| Also I can't say that I enjoyed tinkering with Go templates,
| finicky file syncing etc. just for publishing some Markdown
| text in a pretty package.
|
| If I had to do it again, I would choose Substack, and keep my
| Markdown files backed up just like I do now. In the event of
| having to switch, I can always just publish those files
| elsewhere.
|
| And if Substack also supports custom domains, I would also use
| that to avoid dead links.
|
| _There are cases where your own site is needed however: for
| unique presentations like those on ciechanow.ski, for sites
| where the visual look is a defining feature of what is
| presented etc._
|
| [1]
| https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/How%20I%20write%20this%20blog...
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| That video of you writing on the ipad was hilarious.
| Definitely not what I was imagining.
| alin23 wrote:
| Heh thanks ^_^ that is the effect I was looking to convey.
| You have to try it, it's a really satisfying way of
| writing. Feels like handwriting but works 10 times faster
| with less hand cramping
| imadj wrote:
| > while no one really cares about consuming any of their output
|
| Most people who blog don't aim to be influential writers. It's
| more about self expression.
|
| > they will follow you if you decide to move your work
| elsewhere in the future
|
| Except this almost never happens in the real world
| torh wrote:
| I host my own domain on my own server in my own home. It
| obviously isn't the easiest option, but there are a lot of
| options. I could pay a bit extra to Wordpress to get them to host
| my blog with my own domain. Or I could host a Wordpress blog
| somewhere else, or even just static HTML files.
|
| Actually I try to do both. I have started working on a static
| hand made homepage in addition to my blog. But whatever the
| approach, I still have to produce the actual content. Sometimes I
| feel that is the hardest part.
| defaultcompany wrote:
| "You'll own everything, and it'll be yours forever."
|
| This is overstating it. You cannot "own" a domain name. Domains
| are essentially rented and eventually (whether on purpose or by
| accident) your domain name will expire.
| asim wrote:
| Say this to a non developer. This just isn't realistic for the
| majority of people, nor do they care, or should they. What we
| need is interoperability between services so that backups and
| transfers are much easier. That isn't the case just yet. If we
| moved to a more API first world then it would be very much
| possible. With the advent of GPT related stuff it's clear we're
| going that direction and the interface for everything is changing
| too. So the concept of what is your website might fundamentally
| change too.
| CM30 wrote:
| The best solution is what the Indieweb folks called POSSE:
| Publish on your Own Site , Syndicate Elsewhere:
|
| https://indieweb.org/POSSE
|
| For instance, I might publish a clip on my own site first, then
| mirror it to places like YouTube, TikTok and Reddit so more
| people find it. Or post an article on my own site first, then
| repost it on Medium and Substack (with a canonical saying my own
| version is the original if possible).
|
| That way you're not tied to a specific platform, and can just
| find another place to share/post your work if any of them go to
| hell.
| oh_yes_i_did wrote:
| [flagged]
| spansoa wrote:
| +1 one for the POSSE technique. Assume all walled-gardened
| platforms will be shut down eventually and only passion
| projects like personal homepages remain intact. Although even
| that's not a given. People just get tired and let the domain
| expire or lose enthusiasm and let the project rot. Archive.org
| might have your old site, but even that could go away given
| enough time. Impermanence seems to be a feature of the web,
| despite many saying it's a bug.
| qudat wrote:
| https://prose.sh employs this tactic. You control all the
| source files and then upload them to use. You get to keep all
| your content and you are welcome to host your site elsewhere.
| 101008 wrote:
| Is there an automatic way to do this? Like a SaaS where I paste
| my article URL, chose where to replicate, and it does
| automatically? Bonus points if it gets them from a feed.
| yashap wrote:
| Tools like Buffer or Hootsuite make it pretty easy to cross-
| post content across many networks.
| aminst wrote:
| [dead]
| nicbou wrote:
| I own my work, but about 90% of my traffic comes from Google.
| This is something I try not to think about too much.
| DANmode wrote:
| If it makes you feel any better, a more significant portion may
| come from Bing/OpenAI's way soon.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Or it'll get even better at ingesting all their content and
| providing the answers and points itself, never leading the
| user to their site.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, this strikes me as the end goal that Google, Bing,
| etc. are working towards and envisioning. Why redirect
| users elsewhere when we can just lock them into our AI-
| generated "search engine"? "Reveal original source URL(s)"
| will become a paid feature :)
| revskill wrote:
| When i write, i write a gist.
| livelielife wrote:
| this is a privilege.
|
| the closest to this most of us ever get, is the 'sense' of
| ownership evoked by competent managers.
|
| notice that it is a 'sense of' ownership. not real ownership;
|
| anything that I create by myself, on my own, is not work; it's a
| hobby, it's fun, like really good games.
|
| by this point I even think of work as all the other things I must
| do to afford rent, food, electric bills, chores, etc.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| A case this week that underlines the importance or both self
| hosting and also of archive.org is this weeks shutdown of
| 'zippyshare' which was used by some mp3 blog sites.
|
| One particularly large one that shut down with zippyshare is
| 'Holland tunnel drive' which has been captured by archive.org in
| a couple of locations below.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170711205314/http://hollandtun...
|
| https://archive.org/details/jillem-full-archive
|
| Many similar sites had gone through similar isssues with
| shutdowns of megaupload and similar. Or being kicked off blogspot
| etc. The ones that survive are generally self hosted. But few
| older ones been archived on archive.org like this has.
| Takennickname wrote:
| List of reasons why this is very narrow minded:
|
| 1. You still own your work if you post it other places, just not
| the platform.
|
| 2. You own the platform if you host it on a VPS, but not the
| hardware.
|
| 3. You own the hardware if you host it at home, but still, only
| license the software which runs it.
|
| 4. Many more.
|
| You want real advice? Ignore this guy, and just start. Most of
| you people concerned on where you should start blogging/pocasting
| don't even start because of all the choices and the fearmongering
| (like this guy).
|
| Just write something and hit send. Not doing that is the only
| guarantee of failure. Everything else is fixable.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| Exactly. Whether you control the underlying operating system
| (or network connection) or just the content at the application
| layer, you're still relying on someone else. If you don't have
| good content to share, it's moot anyway.
|
| At the end of the day, any service trades control for
| convenience/access. I run a podcast hosting service that's
| slightly more expensive than hosting yourself with WordPress.
| Paying me to host your show gets you a platform that's had
| 99.999% uptime for years. You don't need to think about
| renewing your domains or certificates or installing
| WordPress/Apache/nginx/Ubuntu/whatever updates. You don't need
| to think about how to get accurate analytics or filtering out
| automated requests from your log data. You don't need to worry
| about your show being protected by a single auth factor. If
| your time is worth $60/hr and my service is $10/mo, is your
| podcast taking more than two hours a year of your time (minus
| hosting costs)? Some people don't want to make that tradeoff
| and that's fine, but it's simply a better choice to find a
| third party that you trust to do stuff for you.
| iamben wrote:
| Counterpoint - this is a bit like saying "sell the product from
| your own website, you'll get 100% of the sales and own the
| customer!"
|
| Totally true, but good luck getting the customer to your site.
| Way easier to put your product on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, wherever
| people are already shopping AS WELL - and take a hit on profit
| (at least initially) and figure out how you build off that.
|
| Leverage all the social media and blog sites and substacks and
| whatever that you can. Build a base and then figure it out from
| there.
| testcase_delta wrote:
| I agree. I happen to sell the same things on my (pretty good!)
| Shopify store as well as on Amazon. Amazon outsells about
| 2000:1. The reason why is simple -- it's traffic. If you can
| get traffic on your own, say with a giant social following or
| TV presence, then owning your platform probably does make
| sense. Otherwise go to where your customers are. It's like the
| old retailers' saying: "Location, Location, Location."
| RangerScience wrote:
| Hmm! Are there any self-hosted things like Notion? This is good
| for _finished_ work, but, notes and in-progress and etc...?
| ashishb wrote:
| https://Obsidian.md is great for that
| cableshaft wrote:
| And then you die, and you stop paying for your own web host, and
| it all goes away anyway, more easily than if you had posted on
| Medium or whatever (because if you're still alive you could keep
| migrating/syndicating your data to other services if they go
| under).
|
| That basically happened with James Mathe. He was the owner of
| Minion Games, and he had an incredible tome of board game
| publishing on Kickstarter advice on his blog.
|
| He died suddenly one day in 2019, and his self-hosted site went
| under. You can still read it to a certain extent thanks to
| archive.org[1], but as thankful as I am for archive.org, they
| don't have the best user experience.
|
| Meanwhile if he had posted it on blogspot or on BoardGameGeek
| (which supports user blogs), it'd still be fully available today.
|
| I think it's important to have a self-hosting solution, but I
| think you also need an alternative. The POSSE solution mentioned
| above would be better than only self-hosting.
|
| Ideally these websites would have better data preservation and
| archiving processes, though, and too many just don't have
| anything in place. Because you're just not going to be able to
| convince everyone to host their own.
|
| I'd settle for automatic conversion to text-only archives, that
| could be good enough while making the required space much more
| miniscule.
|
| [1]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190617212658/http://www.jamesm...
| jmathai wrote:
| For posterity, use a platform where you own your work.
|
| For broadcasting, use platforms you don't own but where people
| are.
|
| Use one or both depending on your goals.
| 79a6ed87 wrote:
| Even though I agree, there will always be things that we don't
| own.
|
| I'm developing my blog in Svelte, and I trust that (despite being
| kind of a niche framework) it will last for long. But if it gets
| abandoned by its developers then I'll have a problem.
|
| The only way for me to own everything on it would be to do
| develop as much as I can by myself, like quit using Sass and
| Svelte in favor of plain CSS and vanilla JS, and also self-host
| it instead of relying on a VPS. And that's not even mentioning
| the dependencies of the API, which is made in Rust and its less
| mature ecosystem
|
| I think that the path to software preservation is a long long
| road
| [deleted]
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| > Imagine a billionaire buying one of the main social media
| services and some things not going as expected.
|
| If you thought that Musk was going to be beneficial for Twitter
| in any way, you were deluding yourself about him. Tesla and
| SpaceX were only successful because competent people did all the
| thinking and spent a lot of time managing upwards.
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(page generated 2023-04-02 23:00 UTC)