Congrats to 'The  Boston Diaries' on 20 years of  blogging [0]. It's
even  more amazing  that  that  20 years  is  available  all in  one
place. I had  to go into the  wayback machine to figure  out that my
first blog post was on 12/19/2003 - so almost 16 years. I won't link
to it as  all my early blogging was not  pseudonymous, but back then
it was all  technical topics on Linux and network  security.  I also
switched platforms a lot. At first,  I was using geeklog on a hosted
server, which  lasted two years  (I was pleasantly surprised  to see
that  geeklog is  still around  [1]).  I  then moved  to self-hosted
wordpress, then blogger (yeah, I have no idea either), then again to
my own VPS with a custom install  of pyblosxom.  That takes me up to
2012,  after which  I pretty  much stopped  doing any  sort of  tech
blogging. I did, however, maintain a  gopher phlog [2] and motd site
[3] on and off  from 2009 until now, but more  on general life stuff
than pure technical howtos. I've also had a gaming blog since 2013.

On formats - I  wrote most of my early blog entries  in HTML. My SDF
motd site is the  same - HTML entries, and I wrote  a perl script to
convert them to  a text format suitable for phlogging,  which is why
many of the  motd articles can be seen in  the phlog. In retrospect,
markdown  would have  been an  easier  way to  go (I  had to  check,
markdown has  been around since  2004).  Writing  raw HTML can  be a
chore,  and  markdown  can  be  used as-is  for  phlog  entries,  no
translation required. I do write in  markdown for my gaming blog - I
use wordpress but  keep the original posts in case  I move platforms
again.

What's  interesting  is  that  early  on,  I  wrote  mainly  for  an
audience. I wanted other people to  read what I wrote and comment on
it or  otherwise get some  use out  of it. I  also wanted to  dig up
consulting  business,  and  I  always thought  an  online  technical
presence was the  best way to do that.  Nowadays  I don't care about
any of  that and  write largely  for myself, although  I do  like to
comment on other  phlogs/blogs and in that way be  part of a virtual
conversation.

[0] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2019/12/04.1
[1] https://www.geeklog.net
[2] gopher://sdf.org/1/users/slugmax
[3] http://slugmax.motd.org