[HN Gopher] Why have a blog? (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
Why have a blog? (2020)
Author : nottrobin
Score : 66 points
Date : 2022-06-07 13:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (robinwinslow.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (robinwinslow.uk)
| [deleted]
| janvdberg wrote:
| You write to discover what you have to say [1]
|
| [1] https://disquiet.com/2019/06/16/word-blog-20th-
| anniversary-1...
| paulpauper wrote:
| A blog is great for storing cryptographic keys. last place anyone
| will read
| saperyton wrote:
| The problem with blogs is that there are just too many
| interesting ones. I can't go down so many rabbit holes. I prefer
| to consume them already curated, like from Thinking About Things
| [0] or reddit.
|
| [0] http://thinking-about-things.com
| Havoc wrote:
| I love the section acknowledging the desire for popularity. Can
| def see a bit of that in myself & I think many can't admit that
| to themselves
| lordnacho wrote:
| I've wanted to start a blog. What's the simplest way to do it?
|
| All I can find online is those marketing articles. HN Brain must
| have some better advice.
| alphabetam wrote:
| I write my blog using Hugo, it is rather simple to use - just a
| folder of markdown files.
|
| For publishing, I use netlify (which does the build and
| hosting). Their free tier is more than enough for me. The
| domain comes from namecheap.
| padheyam wrote:
| I strongly second this. It took me some time to learn the
| first time set up. But it's been well worth it. Now all it
| takes to post something is write on a plain text file -> git
| commit the updated folder.
| kdps wrote:
| What's the current (2022) take on Hugo vs. Jekyll? I'm also
| wondering if Github Pages is a good alternative for hosting.
| Judging from their description, it seems to be free, without
| ads and can optionally be used with a custom domain.
| 1983054104 wrote:
| I have only used Jekyll in the past but I would try Hugo
| nowadays since it's the "brand new stuff" (only because
| it's written in Go). Jekyll hasn't been abandoned which
| means that both are good and I'm sure they have the same
| set of features.
|
| As for using GitHub to host it, it's still free and you can
| use a custom domain which is nice.
| tristan957 wrote:
| I have been using Hugo, Vercel, and a custom domain for my
| blog. I have found Hugo + Vercel to work well together. I
| can't speak for how it compares to Jekyll, but Hugo has
| been fairly good to work in. I like the development story
| quite a bit once you get over the initial hump of getting
| everything setup. I also use Vercel to manage the custom
| domain, which I consider a bonus.
| criddell wrote:
| > Hugo vs. Jekyll
|
| They both work and it's unlikely that either will limit
| you. Just pick one (I recommend flipping a coin) and go.
| RupertWiser wrote:
| If you want an alternative to Wordpress, I've had success
| running a simple kotlin script that converts google docs into
| webpages.
|
| Here's the hackernews discussion around that:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23134101
|
| This is the code I run in a cron job:
| https://gitlab.com/BenWiser/googledocsblog
|
| You do however need a server and your own domain.
| tristan957 wrote:
| Seems like you could get away with using an object store and
| a serverless function for this. Not sure how pricing would
| compare to a server, but seems doable.
| dgb23 wrote:
| It really depends on what you define as "simple".
|
| - For some it might be writing HTML and CSS directly and upload
| the files to some server via FTP.
|
| - For others it would be using a static site generator, and
| uploading the files via FTP or hooking up a git repo that
| builds deploys automatically.
|
| - There are hosted blogging services that provide a GUI,
| hosting and other affordances.
|
| - There are services that are part aggregator part blogging
| platforms, similar to the above but with social media bells and
| whistles.
|
| All of the above can essentially be hosted for free or very
| cheap. Alternatively you can host them yourself which is more
| involved.
|
| IMO for the tech savvy the second option is likely the most
| attractive and productive (SSG + git), the third option
| (blogging platform) is great if you want a GUI and an all-in-
| one experience that includes hosting. The fourth if you like
| social network stuff. The first is fast for starting out and
| can transition into the second down the line if needed.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| I've used bearblog.dev in the past and it seemed to do a good
| job. Otherwise you could use a static site generator like Hugo
| or something if your willing to do it a bit more manually. Or
| even just plain HTML/CSS (could even go without the CSS), which
| has always seemed like a nice idea to me.
| larryett wrote:
| I have a ten year old blog that no one has read but myself in 9
| years.
|
| Keeping a journal has a ton of value, people have known this
| for a long time.
|
| You could just buy a notebook and pen at Walmart for $2 and
| start writing down your thoughts.
|
| I can't think of a bigger waste of time at this point though
| than to start writing down your thoughts with the only
| intention of monetization. If you don't care about other people
| reading your thoughts, things become really simple.
| jtwigg wrote:
| i self host a ghost blog https://ghost.org/docs/install/
| SenHeng wrote:
| Just use wordpress.com until you've found your rhythm. You can
| explore other technical solutions later.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Any one of the hosted blogging providers would be the simplest.
| Nux wrote:
| wordpress.com?
| cpach wrote:
| Wordpress is not a bad alternative.
|
| Personally I would go with Hugo though. The main reasons for
| that: a) Native Markdown support - you can store your blog
| posts in a Git repo. b) Much much easier to write a custom
| theme for Hugo than for Wordpress.
|
| The CMS part of Wordpress is quite good!
| cricalix wrote:
| You can use Wordpress (self hosted) as a CMS for a static
| site with the right plugin.
|
| There are downsides if you do this the free way; anything
| dynamic stops working if it was a WP module (forms, search
| etcetera). However, if it's a basic blog, it'll work just
| fine. SimplyStatic does have a paid version that supports
| search, and if you need low-volume forms you could probably
| use JotForm or similar in JS/HTML embed/iframe mode.
|
| Before I switched to static export of WP, I had OTP auth
| enabled for both the admin and editor accounts. That hasn't
| changed. I also use a webp plugin that rewrites all image
| elements (in posts at least) to picture elements; browsers
| can then pick between the original JPEG or the converted-
| to-WEBP image. Static export respects this element rewrite.
|
| To enable static exporting, I
|
| * migrated the live site to a new subdomain, * added the
| Simply Static plugin, * configured SS to not go near wp-
| uploads - I don't want to double my disk usage, *
| configured nginx to alias the wp-uploads from the dynamic
| subdomain to the static site, * configured nginx to HTTP-
| auth protect the dynamic site - belt/braces approach on top
| of the existing OTP auth.
|
| I don't care much about publishing from the Wordpress app
| on my phone, so the HTTP auth hasn't been a problem for me.
|
| Publishing is "create new post, review it on dynamic site,
| open the SS generate page, click button". It could be
| automated, but it doesn't bother me enough to do that.
|
| A side-effect is that the blog is never down due to things
| like Wordpress upgrades (ie, the maintenance page that
| shows up), because it's not actually powered by WP.
| DarrenDev wrote:
| It sounds and looks ideal but it can get costly if you want
| to do anything non-standard. And by non-standard I mean
| something as simple as adding a ConvertKit newsletter signup
| form to your blog, at which point you need a business package
| that cost non trivial $.
|
| I used to recommend Wordpress.com. I don't anymore. Self
| hosted Wordpress has its own issues. Even with no plugins,
| you still have a very real prospect of malware finding its
| way onto your site if you don't keep everything fully up to
| date.
| marc_io wrote:
| Only if you have a budget for the blog or don't mind
| displaying random ads to your audience.
| 21723 wrote:
| The best route is either to roll your own or go with a
| service like Ghost. Sure, you'll have to pay hosting, but
| you're not going to have shitty ads run on your blog.
|
| Substack seems to be a decent technology; the problem is that
| it's owned by Y Combinator, which means it can't be trusted--
| if you piss off whoever's running YC at the time, you can be
| suddenly banned and have your data stolen.
| basisword wrote:
| I agree. If you want to start a blog use something like
| Wordpress to get going. If you want to mess around with tech
| and never actually write anything because you're having too
| much fun trying out half a dozen static site generators, I
| like Jekyll.
| corobo wrote:
| I think I caught some splash damage off this comment, haha
|
| I settled on Hugo myself
| yesenadam wrote:
| Search HN history, I remember that question being asked on here
| recently, more than once. Quite a few recent ones here:
|
| e.g.
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...
| pizza234 wrote:
| For a programmer, the absolutely simplest solution is (likely)
| using Github pages + Jekyll Now: - to set the
| blog up, fork the Jekyll Now repository, and configure it to
| serve GH Pages - to add a new article, just add a
| markdown file to the repository, and push it
|
| That's all. Of course, styling is an entirely different topic
| :)
| mystickphoenix wrote:
| Github pages is a fantastic way to get a static blog up and
| running. I use Zola instead of Jekyll to have a little more
| control over the look/feel/etc and have an automatic RSS
| feed.
| jstx1 wrote:
| I would recommend Hugo over Jekyll. It seems a bit more
| modern and user friendly, at least for me it was easier to
| set up and customize.
| Zababa wrote:
| I'd say for a Ruby programmer. I've tried installing Jekyll
| on Ubuntu multiple times and every time it ended up in
| disaster following fights with Ruby/rbenv/gem/bundler/Jekyll
| itself.
| pizza234 wrote:
| To clarify to some of the replies:
|
| "Forking Jekyll Now" is a different concept from "Using
| Jekyll".
|
| "Jekyll Now" is a preconfigured repository for a blog, that
| can be used straight away (after configuring the author and
| blog name in the configuration file, of course).
|
| This is probably an extremely simple way to publish a blog;
| using bare Jekyll and configuring a blog from scratch is
| definitely much more work, and I don't classify it as
| "simplest solution".
| danuker wrote:
| For ease of starting, I recommend Blogger -
| https://www.blogger.com/
|
| But I switched to hosting my own static blog with an always-on
| port-forwarded computer, Pelican and Isso.
| pivic wrote:
| I love Mataroa, the blog platform. It allows you to easily
| export all of your content and is very small to load. No ads,
| no tracking. It's free to use, although 9 USD/year brings a
| couple of premiums.
|
| I've written a blog post about Mataroa:
| https://pivic.blog/blog/mataroa/
| notenoughhorses wrote:
| I've been using blot.im It's not free, but it's cheap and the
| workflow really works for me.
|
| You keep the files in markdown in a Dropbox folder, and the
| blot service uses the files to update your blog. This makes it
| easy to use my preferred editors on my phone, iPad, and windows
| or Linux desktop pretty seamlessly.
| soapdog wrote:
| The most important question is what posting workflow do you
| want?
|
| If you want to post only from your computer, then you can go
| with any of the thousands of static-site generators that are
| available out there.
|
| If you're OK with posting by pushing a git commit on a
| repository, then you can post from multiple machines provided
| that you set up all the actions or CI/CD pipelines to make it
| work. Some people love setups like this, but it is not for me.
|
| If you want to spend more time writing than fiddling with your
| blogging system, you can go with a ready-made one such as
| Wordpress, Ghost, Write.As, Blogger, etc. Usually they have
| both SaaS and self-hosted versions. Keeping a self-hosted
| Wordpress safe requires constant attention to updates.
|
| I wrote about how my own blog works[1][2], which is a setup
| that I don't really recommend for those that just want
| something simple.
|
| If I were you, I'd invest in a VPS and self-host something. If
| your objective is blogging for the long run, then you need to
| own your own platform. SaaS come and go, they change, your data
| need to be under your control if you're gonna do it for years
| to come.
|
| [1]: https://andregarzia.com/2022/05/How-this-blog-works-or-
| embra...
|
| [2]: https://andregarzia.com/2022/05/Got-metaWeblog-API-
| working-w...
| viralpoetry wrote:
| The simplest I saw, install Standard Notes
| (https://standardnotes.com/ - open source, free) encrypted
| notes app, write something, then publish it via the interface.
| It will create you a blog on their https://listed.to/ webpage
| DeathArrow wrote:
| The simplest way would be to buy a domain and use a Wordpress
| hosting website.
|
| What I enjoyed more was writing my own blogging engine and
| renting a cheap VPS. :)
| latch wrote:
| I've been (technically) blogging on my own site for 12 years, and
| a number of years before that on another platform. I'd say around
| 10 of those posts have made the front of HN.
|
| I struggle to (a) come up with things to write about and (b) get
| motivated to blog (which is probably the reason for (a)). I also
| feel that it's a lot harder to reach people now ...not sure if
| I'm writing about less interesting topics, or if my previous
| year-long hiatus drove away my readers. But whatever it is, it
| feels a lot more like a chore now than it ever did.
| sudhirkhanger wrote:
| With side learning/coding and personal hobbies I don't find time
| to write.
|
| I guess I also waste a lot of time on internet as well.
| dhosek wrote:
| I made a deliberate choice with my writing site to not have any
| tracking of who visits. I could, I suppose to some processing on
| the logs, but I decided I'd rather just not know if there are any
| visitors or not. I post a couple-three times a month and once in
| a great while I'll get a comment that's not spam and I'm happy
| with that.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I have a personal blog since 2001. It was way easier to just
| write a lot while I was way dumber than what I'm now. It had been
| abandoned few times and resurrected again.
|
| It actually became pretty popular once upon a time. It became
| powerful enough to bring products in the limelight of other
| people (mostly developers), and even bring down a small business
| (I felt so bad, I took my articles down and apologized to the
| business owner). I remember helping launch quite a lot of
| Startups in their very early stage.
|
| Once, in winter of 2010/11, someone walked up to me at HackerDojo
| (Mountain View), and asked me "Are you brajeshwar.com?" I live on
| the opposite side of the Globe, so that felt nice.
|
| It became popular enough as a single source of revenue for me and
| my pre-kid family to survive in a sprawling Mumbai sub-urban
| locality.
|
| Now, it is rather bare, no analytics, and I don't quite write
| anymore. However, I would still love to have my own blog for as
| long as I can. Perhaps I need to start learning something
| entirely different from what I do or can do, and then blog the
| hell out of the experience.
| david_draco wrote:
| The most convincing arguments for not having a blog, however,
| cannot be found in a blog post.
| samsquire wrote:
| I use Github to blog my ideas (see my profile) if you're looking
| for thoughts to read of or ideas for projects it might be worth a
| look. Ideas4 is more technical due to having ideas of
| datastructures and programming language theory.
|
| I created a wordpress blog but I didn't want to pay for it going
| forward. I bought a powerful Hetzner machine as I wanted
| something to play with at the same time. But my desktop was
| powerful enough for playing. So on GitHub people can use issues
| to reply to thoughts and I create a new repository when I get to
| 100 ideas per post. I have people submit examples of the ideas
| going forward when they are created. Or if I didn't know the idea
| already existed.
|
| I use Github as my social network and share my code and try use
| it to talk to other developers.
| silvertaza wrote:
| In terms of tech, I just started one that allowed me infinite
| customizability, but still leveraged good solutions to common
| needs, so I went with Gatsby. It is a static site with a lot of
| potential functionality.
|
| https://silvertaza.com/startup-paths/
|
| It is still more convenient to do blogging in Substack, but for
| potential dev content it is too limited in terms of what you can
| post there. One of my posts has a computer vision based game that
| leverages the webcam, and that would not have been possible
| there.
| gnu wrote:
| Very nice post Robin! And so honest! Subscribed via my rss
| reader.
| nottrobin wrote:
| Thanks! This was really lovely to hear
| riffraff wrote:
| I had 2 blogs (one in italian, one in english) for a few years,
| when I was a student. It was fun, writing was entertaining,
| comments where insightful, and it got me some jobs too :)
|
| But then life happened, and I stopped writing posts.
|
| Then last year, I realized I was missing it, and I started again.
| It's interesting to see how my writing muscles have atrophied
| over the years, and how much harder it is now, but still, maybe
| those will get strong again.
| darthcloud wrote:
| I didn't want to run a blog but I still want to write about stuff
| I did sometimes. So I personally got a Dev Journal thread in my
| GitHub repo discussion section. When I feel like writing about
| something I did I put it there.
| SMAAART wrote:
| I have not 1 but 5 blogs/sites:
|
| 1. Professional blog where I showcase my different approach to my
| profession (operations for high tech companies), thoughts on
| tools, and commentary on industry news. It's kind of boring, but
| it's for me.
|
| 2. Portfolio site. This is where I showcase processes, systems,
| and tools that I have developed for the companies I have worked
| for or consulted for.
|
| 3. Self-therapy secret blog under a pen name that I use to vent
| to myself and to the world about my challenges (main is that I
| have anxiety). I need an outlet where I can be unfiltered.
|
| 4. Passion blog for one of my hobbies.
|
| 5. Passion blog for one of my projects related to my hobby above.
|
| WHY I BLOZg:
|
| Main reason: Writing makes people think better, and better
| thinking is the secret sauce for better life and better
| professional performance.
|
| Secondary reason: Yesterday I received a job offer for my next
| job. It has been a long journey that took me >6 months. Very few
| of my peers have an online presence and nobody has a portfolio.
| Having those put me on a different plane than everyone else.
| Interestingly enough, while I target exclusively Innovative
| companies, most people (CEOs and CXO) had mixed feelings about my
| online presence, but a few really liked it and appreciated my
| commitment to my craft, and my technical knowledge when it comes
| to web publishing.
|
| So, there's that.
|
| TL;DR: writing will make you think better, and will give you an
| advantage in your career. And it's self-therapy.
| SenHeng wrote:
| Some of the dark sides f blogging.
|
| I recently added my newly re-re-re-redesigned blog to my HN
| profile, haven't linked it anywhere else or told anyone and
| already I'm getting tons of bot traffic trying attack it as
| though it were a wordpress site.
|
| Write a blog, but understand that the interwebz isn't as naive as
| it used to be.
| 6510 wrote:
| I discover by accident that if you share a website with
| specific people you get a lovely small audience of actual
| users. Nowadays people also never promote your site which is an
| advantage in this case. Not even google will index without some
| doing. You get no spam and don't have to pay attention to
| resource usage. The cheap hosting allows for high resolution
| images, dozens of GB videos, heavy server side scripts etc And
| if the hit counter moves to fast you programmatically shut it
| down for the day.
| yacine_ wrote:
| Writing has really helped me learn how to think! I highly
| recommend it. Encourage others to write as well!
|
| It's a skill that transfers well to other places.
| kypro wrote:
| I have a blog and it becoming popular ruined joy of it for me.
| It's not that popular, but it does get traffic and it's
| associated to my real name so I have to consider what I write and
| the quality of it.
|
| I wrote a post several years ago about my struggles with being
| autistic. I didn't think much of it at the time - I just wanted
| to vent a bit and I had been using my blog for that since I was a
| teenager. I applied for a job a couple of weeks after I wrote
| that post and I was asked during an interview how I thought my
| autism might impact my work. I was confused at first because I
| never disclosed that information to them, but perhaps
| understandably they Googled my name and found my blog at the top
| of Google.
|
| I started my blog back in 2010 when people didn't care so much
| about anonymity online. The idea that an employer might check
| your social media or Google your name was still quite new back
| then, whereas today I'd guess around 80% of the places I apply to
| seem to Google my name before conducting an interview. In
| hindsight I wish I kept the blog anonymous, but there's also
| technical content on there which I'm proud of and want associated
| to myself. Either way I'm now in a difficult position where I
| can't really use my blog candidly any more because I have to
| consider it more as an extension of my CV.
|
| If you want to express yourself I'd keep it strictly anonymous.
| If you want to write technical content which you want associated
| with yourself you should probably do that somewhere else and
| never mix the two. Having a blog at [firstname][lastname].[TLD]
| where you express anything personal, especially if that includes
| political views or thoughts on cultural events is probably not a
| good idea in this day and age. Arguably even anonymous blogs that
| discuss politics are dangerous.
| lpapez wrote:
| What country are you in? In EU you have a "right to be
| forgotten" and you can ask Google to remove you from the search
| kixiQu wrote:
| > Having a blog at [firstname][lastname].[TLD] where you
| express anything personal, especially if that includes
| political views or thoughts on cultural events is probably not
| a good idea in this day and age.
|
| I see a number of people express this opinion that surprises
| me; I'd love to know the demographics/background/media
| consumption of people who would/wouldn't agree with it.
| nottrobin wrote:
| I feel like you have opinions here - that you think certain
| sorts of groups are more likely to be scared than others. I'm
| sure that's right, but wondering who you have in mind.
|
| As a straight, white, fairly well-off, more or less
| neurotypical man, I'm sure I should be in all the privileged
| groups and so should feel pretty empowered. Maybe that's why
| I feel like I should be able to blog under my own name.
|
| But I completely understand what OP is saying. I definitely
| have the fear, and I've toyed with the idea of having an
| anonymous persona before.
| pilgrimfff wrote:
| Seems self evident. Anything you say without anonymity may be
| used against you by future employers or future Twitter mob
| equivalents at any point.
|
| It's impossible to guess what subset of appropriate speech in
| 2022 will still be appropriate years or decades from now.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Honestly it's the same with everything online nowadays. I have
| an HN account associated with my name, but I'm incredibly
| sparing with what I post from it. 99% of my HN comments are
| from an anonymous account. If someone googles my name and finds
| my HN account they'll see a comment once every month or two
| where I share things I know about my languages of choice; they
| definitely won't find my thoughts on social justice, tech
| culture, etc. It makes me as bland and safe as possible to
| prospective employers (though I do publicize some of my
| interests/hobbies from my "doxxed" accounts at least)
| nottrobin wrote:
| > I was asked during an interview how I thought my autism might
| impact my work
|
| God that makes me angry. Of course I don't know what
| jurisdiction you're in, but the company should be sued for
| this. Of course I know it's easy to say this in theory but most
| people can't afford litigation. But really that should be
| extremely against the law. You should at least name and shame
| the company.
|
| On the anonymous thing - yes I know what you mean. I really
| struggle with overcoming the fear of publishing any significant
| opinions as myself. But I also find maintaining any sort of
| anonymity to be a very daunting thought. I'm such an open
| person generally, and I like that about myself, it would be
| very strange for me to try to hide like that.
| sockaddr wrote:
| The company should be sued for asking about something the
| candidate chose to publicly disclose and write on a blog
| presumably intended to be read by people interested in
| knowing more about them? Really?
| agentdrtran wrote:
| "how do you think becoming pregnant will affect your
| ability to work?" is also illegal for similar reasons.
| meerita wrote:
| I had the most visited blog in the spanish blogosphere and I
| also lost complete interest after it became so popular. I must
| say Twitter helped to migrate my posting and killing my blog
| and my day to day job also ruined my desire to writing posts.
| nottrobin wrote:
| This is really interesting - didn't you try to capitalise on
| your popularity? Monetise it somehow? Or use it to influence
| the conversations you care about in your industry etc?
|
| I'm scared of backlash, but I think it's also kind of my
| dream to have that sort of influence. But I can well believe
| that I couldn't handle it or take advantage of it in
| practice.
| donatj wrote:
| For a little bit there, I would write a blog post whenever I
| solved a problem that took me more than a few hours to solve. I
| can't tell you how many times I have referenced my own post about
| self-signing local certificates. It's been a great resource for
| _myself_ when the problems recur, and I should honestly get back
| into the habit. It's worth it just for reference.
|
| I've had a couple opinion posts go viral here and elsewhere over
| the years, and while I found it really exciting, it's weird how
| the negativity sticks with you. There was a particularly mean
| comment probably ten years ago that I still think about when I
| can't sleep.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| yeah, 1 negative comment sticks in your head more than 100
| positive ones. Not sure what the actual psychological
| explanation for that is but it's true in my experience
| delecti wrote:
| I don't remember if it has a name, but the theory is that
| there's more of an evolutionary advantage to remembering and
| avoiding bad things, because one significant enough bad event
| takes you out of the gene pool.
| apsdsm wrote:
| We'll I think you're great and that other person is a poopy
| head.
| julianlam wrote:
| Agreed, this is exactly the same approach I take with my blog.
|
| I see something cool or spend some time figuring out something,
| I write it down.
|
| I used to write Gists for those things, but I ended to turning
| Gist into a pseudo database and built my blog to use it as a
| backend.
| barrysteve wrote:
| I shouldn't ask but I wonder what the comment was. There's a
| weird individuality to internet comments. We all read the same
| comments and sometimes walk away with a meaning that only
| matters to us, which we rarely share with others. I wonder,
| should there be second order discussions about public comments?
| aendruk wrote:
| A few days ago someone got confused by traffic patterns and
| shouted angrily at me from his car window. He was in the
| wrong, but still it sticks in my mind. I wish there was a way
| to have some meta discussion about situations like that
| without it inevitably being interpreted as a petty
| continuation of the first-order conflict.
| donatj wrote:
| It wasn't even _that_ pointed. I don 't remember the exact
| wording but the comment was basically someone telling me I
| had no right to criticize a language's choices until I'd
| written a compiler myself.
|
| It's is clearly nonsense, the same kind of logic as people
| who hate movie critics, but it's gotten a rent-free place in
| my head for years now.
|
| Something just about the tone of the comment made it stick in
| my brain.
| nottrobin wrote:
| Well in case it helps, yes that's complete nonsense. Of
| course languages can be criticised, by anyone, just like
| everything else. That's how they improve.
|
| I guess by that logic the person shouldn't be criticising
| your criticism of the language until they've tried
| criticising the language themselves .
| nottrobin wrote:
| Yeah I relate to this so hard
| ecornflak wrote:
| I enjoy the same sense of accomplishment as I did running a BBS
| or installing Linux (and getting the modem driver to work) back
| in the day.
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| I've had a blog on and off for many years (link in my bio)
|
| For many years, I shut it down-- changed it from Wordpress to
| static html and hosted on netlify. Ignored it completely for 3+
| years.
|
| Then last year, I restarted it-- moved to Ghost this time-- its a
| better (simpler?) version of Wordpress. Tried a dozen static
| generators, hated all of them, as beyond the simple "write 5
| blogs and publish" they become hard to use. I like Ghost's front
| end, like that they take care of hosting. I've had a few articles
| blow up on HN/Reddit, Ghost managed the spike.
|
| The strange thing is you can never tell which article of yours
| will blow up. One of mine flopped on HN, 0 upvotes. Then someone
| else submitted it again, this time it was front page for several
| hours, got 60-70k visitors in a day. also blew up on
| Reddit/Linkedin, had random poeple trying to friend me.
|
| Other articles I thought would be useful and in line with what
| people were discussing here-- vanished without a trace. Or they
| got 5-10 upvotes, and then vanished (with 0 comments).
|
| I keep the blog now because I see people still find old articles
| I wrote useful. There is a small expense, but tis worth it, as
| when I have something to say, I dont have to worry about seeing
| where I will share it. If nothing else, the few poeple subscribed
| will see it.
|
| I no longer write to a schdule (which is what marketers advise--
| write every week! promote!), as that made me hate it. Now I write
| what I love. Still try some promotion by sharing here /Reddit,
| but thats about it. Quit Twitter/FB years ago, so never go there.
|
| So yes, I would recommend people have a blog, even if you publish
| once every few months. ITs nice to have a platform you control.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Then someone else submitted it again, this time it was front
| page for several hours, got 60-70k visitors in a day. also blew
| up on Reddit /Linkedin, had random poeple trying to friend me._
|
| This is often the case. The list of new posts on any given site
| will be full of junk, so it is down to luck that your content
| that is worth bothering with gets noticed by people who it is
| relevant to. As well as voting it up, some of them are likely
| to post about it elsewhere, or maybe forward the link more
| privately, and (again with a large luck factor) you might get a
| chain reaction of interest or it might just fizzle out.
|
| The real luck of the draw comes when someone with a
| significantly sizes circle of followers forwards or otherwise
| mentions what you have posted, or0 just comments on it, as this
| increases the change of that chain reaction of interest
| happening.
|
| The key1 is to not care for wide dissemination as a goal, just
| consider it a happy accident if it happens, and instead write
| what is useful to you and/or your close circles (personal or
| professional, depending on the nature of the content).
|
| ----
|
| [0] if the platform highlights such events to others
|
| [1] I assume, I've not got any of my stuff out there ATM due to
| lack of time, lack of motivation, and choice paralysis2
|
| [2] which or the many _many_ possible things do I do first?
|
| [3] writing about things can aid understanding, or just help
| you decide further direction, in the same way that more
| generally _doing_ can be more effective than _reading_ (after
| initial research at least)
| nottrobin wrote:
| Interesting, nice that you like Ghost. I went to university
| with one of the founders, and I was kinda considering applying
| for a job there, they seem like a pretty cool company.
|
| Yes HN seems to be largely random chance. I've had this and one
| other post do quite well on here recently, and both times it
| was resubmissions that succeeded, with the first submission
| getting basically 0 votes.
|
| I would also think it's worth keeping my blog around for the
| few articles people might find useful (there's one about Docker
| networking that keeps getting visits, even though surely docker
| must have fixed that bug by now...)
|
| FWIW, my Jekyll + GitHub Pages + Cloudflare blog is free to run
| & handles HN traffic no problem (apart from the small cost of
| the domain name, which is sort of optional). I'd be happy to
| tell you more if you think it might save you some money.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > The strange thing is you can never tell which article of
| yours will blow up.
|
| The HN "new" page is lightly read -- a bit tiresome to page
| through all the chaff there. So a lot of good thought ages out,
| content link not followed.
| Zak wrote:
| > _moved to Ghost this time-- its a better (simpler?) version
| of Wordpress_
|
| For clarity, Ghost is not a fork of Wordpress. They're written
| in different languages.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > Ghost is powered by a modern technology stack using Node.js
|
| https://ghost.org/vs/wordpress/
| egypturnash wrote:
| Ghost's overall initial _pitch_ was definitely "Wordpress
| without the things people often dislike about Wordpress".
| It's definitely aiming at the same fast install/nice web UI
| space that made WP dominate the web for a long time.
| dspillett wrote:
| Originally Ghost was a reaction to the problems some (many?)
| had with WordPress, it was deliberately trying to be less
| while doing specific things better (more efficient, easier to
| design/populate). I've not actually used it despite watching
| closely early on (I've not used WP significantly myself
| either, but know people who do/did, who I've helped out on
| some technical matters) mainly because my own making-content-
| worth-publishing projects have all come to very little thus
| far!
|
| From comments (on HN and elsewhere) in recent years I get the
| impression that Ghost is still a better optimised solution
| than WP for some common use cases, but has switched direction
| a bit and started to experience the feature creep that is one
| of WP's issues which Ghost aimed to avoid.
| karaterobot wrote:
| People used to keep commonplace books, which were collections of
| quotations you'd read and wanted to keep. I use my blog for this:
| it's just a single page of text, with 482 entries on it, mostly
| quotes from books or articles, occasionally movie quotes. I use
| it as a reference all the time.
| dhosek wrote:
| Back in the olden days, that was my .plan file
| riffraff wrote:
| anarchaia[0] was the original tumblelog as far as I know, and
| it was basically a dump of interesting links, quotes, pictures
| and minor writings, collected by day.
|
| I always thought it was a pretty awesome way to collect things.
|
| [0] https://anarchaia.org/archive/2006/03.html
| FerretFred wrote:
| It's well worth doing, especially if you have an important series
| of events to chronicle. I started my original blog in the late
| 90s: I wrote the software myself (probably badly) and based it on
| PHP and MySQL: I thought other bloggers at the time did that as
| well.. maybe they didn't :) Anyway, I chronicled the first 5
| years of my new family growing up, complete with pictures, and
| diligently backed up the precious database on a regular basis, to
| CD. Then, after moving house a couple of times I realised that
| I'd physically lost the F**** backup, and my blog was lost
| forever. I never quite got over that. Nowadays it wouldn't be a
| problem with multiple backups to Cloud etc. If you're going to
| start a blog on _any_ platform, make sure you back it up!
| FerretFred wrote:
| yeah! I actually tried the Wayback Machine/Archive, and sure
| enough my blog is there. However, I designed it to just have
| (say) 5 lines of content under the header, then the reader
| would clock on "More" to read the whole article. This is
| because the blog was originally designed to be accessed on a
| WAP-capable phone (https://youtu.be/Da8_4NqxLM8?t=18). Sadly,
| in my case this meant running a database query and of course
| the Archive doesn't support that as there's no database :/ I
| just need a couple of days to have another look for that CD ...
| mgdlbp wrote:
| I feel a particular mix of disappointment and loss(?) every
| time I encounter an interesting link on a long-dead site only
| to find that the target, never saved, is lost to time. And
| the same for pages with crucial, unsaved images. Better the
| proverbial ignorance, I guess.
|
| Though, have you looked at the Wayback Machine Site Map and
| URLs views for your blog? On the off chance that the Alexa
| crawler could already extract URLs from JavaScript back then,
| there's a possibility that additional requests were captured
| that can't be played back in the Wayback Machine. (This all
| assuming the site was served over HTTP to the crawler--
| otherwise it would have only gotten an 'unsupported' page,
| right?)
| FerretFred wrote:
| I tried, and failed. I shall know for next time :(
|
| _The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL. This page
| is not available on the web because of server error Click
| here to search for all archived pages_
| wingerlang wrote:
| How about the wayback machine?
| deckiedan wrote:
| Can you find it on the internet archive? https://archive.org/
| dcminter wrote:
| I second this suggestion - definitely worth trying. My own
| frivolous homepage on a Demon Internet subdomain was archived
| in '96 and it wasn't exactly page of the day so there's a
| good chance your stuff was captured. Incidentally, I believe
| that if you have a current robots.txt on the current domain
| (not the archived) in question that disallows access to the
| pages then although they're archived they won't show in
| waybackmachine's archive. You can enable access to them by
| allowing them in the (current) robots.txt and they should
| show up again. Presumably you'd have to wait for
| waybackmachine to re-crawl your robots.txt
|
| Worth a shot?
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