I know the anxiety of sharing something with the world. I know there is a pressure to match the quality we see elsewhere on the web. But maybe we should stop trying to live up to somebody else’s standards and focus on just getting stuff out there instead. Maybe our “imperfect” things are already helpful to someone. Maybe this shouldn’t be so hard.
This looks like a nice way to get a blog up and running:
Blot turns a folder into a blog. Drag-and-drop files inside to publish. Images, text files, Word Documents, Markdown and more become blog posts automatically.
It came to my attention after writing my blog post about how we choose the web we want that the pessimism is about not being able to make a living from blogging.
Brent gives an in-depth response to this concern about not making a living from blogging. It’s well worth a read. I could try to summarise it, but I think it’s better if you read the whole thing for yourself.
You can entertain, you can have fun, you can push the boundaries of the form, if you want to. Or you can just write about cats as you develop your voice. Whatever you want!
I couldn’t agree more with this sentiment:
You choose the web you want. But you have to do the work.
A lot of people are doing the work. You could keep telling them, discouragingly, that what they’re doing is dead. Or you could join in the fun.
A great introduction to indie web building blocks from Jamie.
A terrific—and fun!—talk from Zach about site deaths, owning your own content, and the indie web.
Oh, and he really did create MySpaceBook for the talk.
Max describes how he does bookmarking on his own site—he’s got a bookmarklet for sharing links, like I do. But he goes further with a smart use of the “share target” section in his web app manifest, as described by Aaron.
By the way, Max’s upcoming talk at the Web Clerks conference in Vienna sounds like it’s going to be unmissable!
Facebook and even Instagram are at odds with the principles of the open web.
Related: Aaron is playing whack-a-mole with Instagram because he provides a servie to let users export their own photographs to their own websites.
I saw Nicholas give this great talk at Paris Web on site deaths, the indie web, and publishing on your own site. That talk was in French, but these slides are (mostly) in English—I was able to follow along surprisingy easily!
Some reminiscing at a recent Homebrew Website Club prompted James to organise a Brighton bloggers meetup …ten years on from the last one!
Mark your calendar: October 21st.
While you’re making your calendar, be sure to put in the dates for Indie Web Camp Brighton: October 19th and 20th. It would be lovely see some Brighton bloggers there!
We choose whether our work stays alive on the internet. As long as we keep our hosting active, our site remains online. Compare that to social media platforms that go public one day and bankrupt the next, shutting down their app and your content along with it.
But the real truth is that as long as we’re putting our work in someone else’s hands, we forfeit our ownership over it. When we create our own website, we own it – at least to the extent that the internet, beautiful in its amorphous existence, can be owned.
I fully expect my personal website to outlive Twitter and as such have decided to take full ownership of the content I’ve posted there. In true IndieWeb fashion, I’m taking ownership of my data.
I know a number of people who blog as a way to express themselves, for expression’s sake, rather than for anyone else wanting to read it. It’s a great way to have a place to “scream into the void” and share your thoughts.
Ignore the clickbaity headline and have a read of Whitney Kimball’s obituaries of Friendster, MySpace, Bebo, OpenSocial, ConnectU, Tribe.net, Path, Yik Yak, Ello, Orkut, Google+, and Vine.
I’m sure your content on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is perfectly safe.
A way for you to comment (anonymously, if you wish) on any post that accepts webmentions. So you can use this to respond to posts on adactio.com if you want.
Editing is hard because you realize how bad you are. But editing is easy because we’re all better at criticizing than we are at creating.
Relatable:
My essay was garbage. But it was my garbage.
This essay is most definitely not garbage. I like it very much.
The best time to make a personal website is 20 years ago. The second best time to make a personal website is now.
Chris offers some illustrated advice:
- Define the purpose of your site
- Organize your content
- Look for inspiration
- Own your own domain name
- Build your website
I’ve shaped this timeline over five months. It might look simple, but it most definitely was not. I liken it to chipping away at a block of marble, or the slow process of evolving a painting, or constructing a poem; endless edits, questions, doubling back, doubts. It was so good to have something meaty to get stuck into, but sometimes it was awful, and many times I considered throwing it away. Overall it was challenging, fun, and worth the effort.
Simon describes the process of curating the lovely timeline on his personal homepage.
My timeline is just like me, and just like my life: unfinished, and far from perfect.
This is a great how-to from Darius Kazemi!
The main reason to run a small social network site is that you can create an online environment tailored to the needs of your community in a way that a big corporation like Facebook or Twitter never could. Yes, you can always start a Facebook Group for your community and moderate that how you like, but only within certain bounds set by Facebook. If you (or your community) run the whole site, then you are ultimately the boss of what goes on. It is harder work than letting Facebook or Twitter or Slack or Basecamp or whoever else take care of everything, but I believe it’s worth it.
There’s a lot of good advice for community management and the whole thing is a lesson in writing excellent documentation.
This is good to know! Because of a bug in Google App Engine, Brid.gy won’t work for sites using Brotli compression on HTML.