[HN Gopher] Why Blog If Nobody Reads It?
___________________________________________________________________
Why Blog If Nobody Reads It?
Author : alexgiann
Score : 198 points
Date : 2025-02-09 17:50 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (andysblog.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (andysblog.uk)
| chistev wrote:
| Because writing is fun.
|
| Check out my personal blog
|
| https://rxjourney.com.ng
|
| If you like it and you're feeling extra generous, you can leave a
| donation.
| JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote:
| Change that Twitter account. Do you have a RSS feed? How can I
| donate?
|
| Last but not least, your blog is unusable without JS. The posts
| are not links for some reason, why would you make such a
| paywall?
| chistev wrote:
| You can donate here -
|
| https://buymeacoffee.com/chistev12
|
| I don't have a RSS feed but I have a newsletter with a
| subscribe button.
|
| What do you mean by posts are not links? You mean you can't
| click on them to get to the detail page?
|
| Edit: What's wrong with my Twitter account?
| Pooge wrote:
| > What do you mean by posts are not links?
|
| Not GP, but he is right; the behavior of your website is
| semantically incorrect. Looks like you redirect the users
| to your blog posts by using <button /> instead of <a />.
|
| I also agree that your website should _absolutely not_
| require JavaScript to work. Clicking on links is something
| that is possible with 0 lines of JavaScript.
|
| > I don't have a RSS feed but I have a newsletter with a
| subscribe button.
|
| This is also not very hacker-friendly behavior. Why should
| users give you their email addresses when a RSS feed is
| much easier to implement and use?
| chistev wrote:
| > Not GP, but he is right; the behavior of your website
| is semantically incorrect. Looks like you redirect the
| users to your blog posts by using <button /> instead of
| <a />.
|
| I'll fix this. Thanks.
|
| > This is also not very hacker-friendly behavior. Why
| should users give you their email addresses when a RSS
| feed is much easier to implement and use?
|
| I'll do this too. Thanks.
| Pooge wrote:
| I'm glad you took it nicely. You should definitely post
| here when you write a new article.
|
| There's always something to learn! Just remember to do
| things the easiest way possible; <a> allows you to
| "redirect" users using HTML-only, while <button> needs an
| event attached to it using JavaScript. There are many
| things that people use JavaScript for but that are 100%
| possible using HTML. We should favor those.
|
| Also, writing a static website removes a plethora of
| vulnerabilities. Collecting email addresses comes with
| its legal burden, too (do you delete people's email
| addresses if they ask you to and are in the EU?).
| chistev wrote:
| Yea, sure I will delete emails if asked to, but no one
| has ever asked.
| arjonagelhout wrote:
| I just spent an hour reading some of your posts, and wish you
| good luck in escaping the matrix, by transitioning more into
| tech :)
| chistev wrote:
| Thank you.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > If I write it, they will come. They won't. There are billions
| of blog posts out there. The internet is an infinite void, and
| your blog is a whisper in a hurricane.
|
| This has not proven to be true over a long enough window.
|
| I've kept a blog of some kind since 2005 and I'm always surprised
| looking at the traffic what posts get picked up by Google and end
| up driving traffic for one reason or another. One of my posts is
| prominent enough that I recently started to notice inbound
| traffic from ChatGPT (I assume it is being cited as authoritative
| on the subject).
|
| A few years back, I started on Medium with 0 readers and just
| started writing. 100 ticked by and it was a small milestone. Then
| 500, then 1000. Just write in your authentic voice; don't think
| about an audience.
|
| There are literally thousands of videos on recipes for omelettes
| (example) on YT, yet more are published every day. The thing is,
| there's a video and a voice for every audience.
| vallode wrote:
| The market for TODO list apps is 1 for every person in the
| world, everyone has a slightly different subjectivity and
| therefore has a slightly different optimal experience when it
| comes to TODO lists. Subjectivity is formed over time and
| through the course of events, therefore the market for TODO
| list apps is 1 for every person in the world for a given
| timeframe.
|
| It's an obvious hyperbole but I think it stands to show that,
| in a similiar fashion, there is a reader (and by some
| aggregation readers plural) for everything you might think of
| writing.
|
| How to get started with web development in 2025? What is ray-
| casting? How to emulate a piece of hardware in <language>? What
| I had for dinner tonight!
|
| It may not be that everything is viral or a hit but you should
| find that most of the content you right will resonate with
| _someone_ and potentially help multiple _someones_.
|
| Sometimes being satisfied with that 10-100 readers is all there
| is to it.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42685534
|
| _Why I still blog after 15 years_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646531
|
| _Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42872276
| eccentricwind wrote:
| > Remember when maintaining a blog was THE way to build your
| developer brand?
|
| Jeff Atwood's (co-founder of Stack Exchange) Coding Horror
| comes to mind, and how the teenage me was amazed at how someone
| got offered such a good job with such an amazing office [0]
| because of blogging.
|
| The smaller, more intimate internet was truly something else.
|
| [0]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/five-things-you-didnt-know-
| abo...
| MattSayar wrote:
| I still reference Jeff's stuff when I blog. Such good stuff
| scinadier wrote:
| I keep a personal website and blog and take pleasure knowing that
| my non-internet friends and family check in on it.
| ZeWaren wrote:
| I document technical things on my blog and hardly anyone reads
| it. But later on when I need that thing again, I just go there
| and I have the perfect documentation available for the topic
| (it's perfect since I wrote it hahaha).
| tverbeure wrote:
| This happens to me all the time. I could make notes about how I
| did something and lose them, or I could spend an hour or two
| extra and convert it into a blog post, and I'll be able to
| refer to it over and over again.
| snozolli wrote:
| Same. I keep a couple of blogs on different topics and try to
| write up any challenge I come across. Not only does it help to
| cement ideas in my head and expose areas I'm foggy about, but
| I've referred back to my previous experience this way countless
| times.
| plufz wrote:
| Do you get any traffic? Does it feel worth the extra time
| compared to just doing local notes?
| snozolli wrote:
| I don't know. I stopped bothering to look, since it's never
| going to drive income or anything. It's worth it to me
| because 1) I get to help others, which brings satisfaction
| and 2) I can read what I wrote from anywhere and send
| someone a link if necessary.
| forinti wrote:
| Over the years, my blog has become exactly that.
| rasso wrote:
| Care to share your blog's url?
| righthand wrote:
| Your intention is still to pass on the knowledge though
| regardless of traffic otherwise why even publish if it's just
| for you? What is the difference from the Documents dir at that
| point?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I can stay in my browser and use Google, DuckDuckGo, or even
| my on-site search (I use Apache Solr, I'm a little weird
| compared to the typical hosted blog) and don't have to go
| into some webapp or search on some local notes app.
|
| I can also add permalinks to any of the posts from anywhere,
| and share them in public documentation or bug reports and
| such, a handy feature.
| righthand wrote:
| I do not understand the need to never-leave-the-browser
| especially with modern window tiling, but I respect it as a
| preference that other people have. As for syncing I just
| use file sharing (Syncthing), I hardly live collaborate on
| documents and if I did everyone else in the group ended up
| doing the typing. Otherwise it's write then get reviewed
| then reiterate. So unfortunately nothing about the online
| text editors really strike my fancy. I also find the
| browser almost too distracting and often get sidetracked
| while using it for research during writing time.
| jinushaun wrote:
| I can't access my computer's Documents directory on my phone
| when I'm away from home.
| righthand wrote:
| Syncthing, Dropbox, etc.
| saagarjha wrote:
| People occasionally stumble on it and find value.
| righthand wrote:
| Right the intention to share knowledge.
| jinushaun wrote:
| That's why I blog. It's basically long-form GitHub gist,
| publicly available on the internet.
| spmcl wrote:
| Writing helps me think. Posting a thought in public forces me to
| commit to an idea and clean up how I communicate it. I learn more
| about the subject and myself along the way.
|
| Henrik Karlsson has a good series of posts on this subject:
| https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/writing-to-think
|
| I journal daily about a topic I pull off a backlog of ideas.
| After the end of my allotted journaling time, if I think "there
| are more threads here to uncover," I spend more time on it. If I
| feel confident, I clean it up into a blog post.
|
| Obligatory link to my own blog: https://www.seanmcloughl.in
| righthand wrote:
| Publish a blog so an LLM can use it and make money for someone
| already wealthy.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| You laugh, but Chat-GPT "Deep Research" cites my technical blog
| very frequently. With attribution, no less. Within the next ~2
| years, I expect that most of the people who read my blog will
| find it via LLM.
| righthand wrote:
| And never attribute anything to you, but I'm sure ChatGPT
| will be cited. If OpenAI campaigns that DeepSeek is stealing
| their IP, is DeepSeek stealing your IP or is OpenAI?
| kenmacd wrote:
| Obviously facetious, but I'd hope most people would want their
| blog post read by LLMs.
|
| I suspect (hope) a lot of blog posts are written to share
| knowledge. In that regard having that knowledge trained in to
| LLMs (ideally open ones, but even closed ones) could further
| that goal.
| JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote:
| What was knowledge sharing is now called "making Zuck and
| Sammy richer."
| ghaff wrote:
| I pretty much hate the mindset of don't do something if it
| might make someone else money even if you otherwise want to do
| it. One of several issues I have with the non-commercial
| creative commons license.
| righthand wrote:
| I didn't say don't do something. I said do something and
| understand a modern consequence. Go ahead publish but don't
| be surprised when your work isn't attributed correctly in the
| future and empowers people you may not agree with.
|
| Blogs aren't the only form of publishing and sharing.
|
| Maybe after the AI winter subsides it might make sense again.
| A world where people were encouraged to publish to share
| knowledge ended up being publish to support Google's hold on
| the net, now evolved to publish so people can read 5% of what
| you wrote distilled through statistical summation.
|
| It makes all long form content look bad, not just the bad
| long form content. It continues to enable the societal trend
| of only consuming short form content. Which in turn enables
| reactionary and low information behavior instead of critical
| thought.
| simonw wrote:
| Writing on a blog is a very inexpensive way to establish your
| credibility about different subjects. This pays off later down
| the line when you can link people to things you've written in the
| past.
|
| Credibility is a _very valuable_ commodity. It 's worth investing
| in ways to build more of it.
|
| Don't assume people will stumble across your content (though they
| will eventually via Google). Actively send links to people who
| you are already engaged in conversation with.
|
| It's not the number of readers you have that matters: it's their
| quality. I'll take a dozen people reading my stuff who might
| engage with me usefully or lead to future opportunities over a
| thousand readers who don't match that criteria.
| n_ary wrote:
| Agreed, after a year or two, blogs become your experience logs
| to prove experience and credibility once the landscape is
| killed by GenAI slops and SEO scams.
|
| Anyone can generate a big portfolio of projects these days(be
| it graphics, video, software, writing etc) but blog posts from
| 2023 and before are proof and undeniable.
| scinadier wrote:
| I've been treating public Git repository commits in the same
| vein - a receipt of incremental changes that show that an
| individual can do some programming. Granted this is not fool-
| proof - like all things that are complex, it needs to be
| evaluated with a suite of other factors and conditions to be
| determined valid. A website written in a personal voice is
| one of these factors.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Anyone can generate a big portfolio of projects these
| days(be it graphics, video, software, writing etc) but blog
| posts from 2023 and before are proof and undeniable.
|
| I always read blogs if people include them in resumes.
|
| It's really cool when an applicant has a blog with unique and
| interesting content, but I can't remember this happening
| without us already having been very impressed by the
| candidate's resume.
|
| More commonly, blog content was ambiguous about the
| applicant's skills. For example, when someone applies to an
| embedded job but has a blog of beginner level Arduino
| projects, is that because they're an expert creating
| tutorials for beginners, or because they are a beginner and
| these entry-level projects represent their skill level?
|
| I also think people greatly overestimate the idea that
| someone will LLM their way into a great blog, and they
| greatly underestimate the difficulty of forging timestamps.
| Even git timestamps are easy to fake. Your interviewers
| aren't going to scrutinize the Wayback machine for evidence,
| but not being indexed isn't proof that it wasn't there
| anyway.
| jwagenet wrote:
| Maybe it's different in embedded, but as a mech e: any
| moderately complex hardware project will likely cost orders
| of magnitude more than a software project to prototype and
| manufacture. Off the self electronic parts have become much
| cheaper, but if you need more than some plastic, 3D parts
| it's still expensive.
| Retr0id wrote:
| > is that because they're an expert creating tutorials for
| beginners, or because they are a beginner and these entry-
| level projects represent their skill level?
|
| You can tell by reading one of them though, right? For a
| subject I'm an expert at, I can tell the difference between
| an expert talking about the basics, and a beginner doing
| the same.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's probably not the only input you want but, generally,
| I agree with your comment especially across a number of
| posts.
| deadbabe wrote:
| A dark pattern on your self hosted blogging website is to
| backdate blog posts and make yourself seem very good at
| predicting future trends.
|
| There is no reason why you have to write a blog over a long
| period of time, you could quickly pump out several blog posts
| and link to them to establish credibility quickly.
| sebmellen wrote:
| We need better timestamping services for this.
|
| I tried to write out an initial spec here, but I haven't
| been able to write any implementations yet:
| https://github.com/sebmellen/proof-of-origination.
| begueradj wrote:
| Many people wrote about why it is important to blog, but I
| never heard of what you just stated about credibility. That's
| the best and most convincing thing I ever heard. Thank you very
| much for having shared it here.
| afterburner wrote:
| It's just self-marketing. Nothing new.
| ghaff wrote:
| That trivializes it, I think. A ton of what people do
| related to their jobs is marketing at some level. A lot of
| people here probably resent marketing and self-promotion
| (to a certain level) but that's the way the world works. If
| no one has any idea what you do, either directly or through
| your manager, guess who is getting the chop if the company
| cuts back even a little.
| afterburner wrote:
| That's fine.
|
| I would also argue self-marketing is important when you
| have lazy or bad managers.
| ghaff wrote:
| Good managers help but you're ultimately responsible for
| your own career/reputation.
| bawolff wrote:
| I think the key is that its high effort self marketing. Its
| proving you are willing to put in work which is hard to
| fake.
| layer8 wrote:
| If I smell self-marketing, it reduces your credibility to
| me.
| ghaff wrote:
| I regularly have conversations with people that end up with
| some form of "Let's not belabor this over beers but I'll send
| you a link to something I wrote. It may be a _little_ bit stale
| but let me know what you think and we can follow up. "
|
| Blogging has internal benefits of organizing thoughts or even
| just being a fun hobby. But it's external validation as well.
| Sure, writing a book is even more but that's probably 100s of
| times more work.
| boznz wrote:
| I have two book and tons of blog posts only a few people have
| read.. Still feels good. I even wrote a blog post on why.
| alphazard wrote:
| Whether or not someone has written up or is willing to write up
| their opinion is a good way to determine how seriously to take
| that opinion.
|
| Using that as a first pass has led to more time engaging with
| thoughtful people about well considered ideas, and less time
| listening to the noise that shows up when you solicit opinions.
| n_ary wrote:
| In this age of LLMs and hallucinations/deceptions, a personal
| blog is a best testament of one's knowledge and musing on various
| topics. Once AI gets prominent, there will be a time when you can
| refer to your nice blog and say that, this is you giving
| untainted opinion on a topic when people can no longer trust
| anything anymore being original.
|
| If I see someone's blog today with posts from last few years of
| longer, regardless of their current situation, I appreciate that
| they are fairly intellectual person.
|
| Now I will show myself out and try to start my own blog which I
| have been procrastinating over for decades.
| jefftk wrote:
| Other things I get out of blogging, in addition to Andy's points:
|
| * I can link people to my carefully considered thoughts on a
| subject instead of needing to write something up each time.
|
| * While most people don't read what I write, some do, and I've
| had good conversations and friendships come out of it.
|
| * It makes me a better writer. In my professional life I can
| write things much faster and better than if I wasn't also
| blogging for fun.
|
| * LLMs learn from it. Our future may be run by machines, and if
| so I want my perspective to be one they consider.
| lapcat wrote:
| There's a point to writing, but is there a point to publishing
| your diary on the internet? You could just keep it under your
| pillow, or on your own computer.
|
| I blog so that other people read my writing, and fortunately they
| do, at least sometimes. I don't think I'd continue if there was
| no public interest.
| wsintra2022 wrote:
| Valid point, wonder why it was down voted. I was thinking that
| question myself, yes write down your thoughts in a journal
| digital or analog and you can always refer back to that time
| and place but what benefit do you get by giving it away for all
| to ignore or consume?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I disagree. I write differently when I anticipate an audience
| (even if they never come).
|
| Maybe parallel: I notice when, for example, I edit videos in my
| own world I have a very different take on the edit when I am
| showing it to someone for the first time.
|
| Thinking to myself: "Now as I watch someone else watching it, I
| am become aware that this scene goes on a bit too long. This
| cut is a little abrupt, disorienting."
|
| I didn't "see" those until I had an audience.
| lapcat wrote:
| > I write differently when I anticipate an audience (even if
| they never come).
|
| Is that good, though? If the product is purely for self-
| consumption, is the audience-anticipating version necessarily
| the better version?
|
| And at what point, after how many unread blog posts, do you
| rationally stop anticipating an audience?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I know what you mean. I'm not very reserved (is that the
| word I want?) though and don't mind speaking my mind --
| public or otherwise. Perhaps having left the job market,
| having passed 60 years of age makes me give less of a shit.
|
| That said though, "publishing" keeps me honest. (In the
| same way I find using my actual name on the internet "keeps
| me honest". I'm disinclined to shit-post.)
|
| I am more inclined to, if not fact-check all points I make,
| just drop indefensible things I might have said altogether.
| (And sometimes I learn just why a thought of mine is
| indefensible, ha ha.)
| kittikitti wrote:
| I don't have social media so my blogs are often the only ways my
| family and friends connect with me. I think this original article
| is misguided and the big tech brainwashing has us forget that we
| blog all the time on their social media apps. Those blog posts on
| TikTok, Instagram, or X are always there. It's a little insidious
| that there's no mention of that.
| wsintra2022 wrote:
| Social media posts are not really writing though. You do not
| write down detailed thoughts on social media it's often more
| likely brain farts than anything.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I blog on gopher and gemini, maintenance is very easy and it is
| simple to convert between gemini and gopher.
|
| Do people read them ? I doubt it, maybe 1 or two once in a while.
| But as the article said there are other reasons to maintain a
| blog.
| d_burfoot wrote:
| Blogging is like all other content creation: the vast majority of
| the viewership goes to the top 0.1% of creators. This is the same
| whether you're talking about YouTube, Twitter, podcasts,
| OnlyFans, scientific papers, traditional books, etc etc.
| stared wrote:
| > Future you. Your posts become a time capsule of your evolving
| mind.
|
| Sometimes, I am the main beneficiary of my blog posts. But there
| is a much more practical point than bookmarking my progress -- it
| is a polished resource with carefully selected references.
|
| > One right person. Maybe one day, someone stumbles across your
| words at exactly the right moment. And that changes something for
| them.
|
| Sometimes one. Sometimes a few.
|
| In general, I have found that blog posts have a larger impact
| than my conference talks. At a conference, say, with 100 people
| in the audience, perhaps only 20 find it relevant. With a blog
| post, we may feel disappointed that only 1,000 people read it --
| which is small by blogging standards, but still way more than one
| would reach at a conference.
| great_tankard wrote:
| This is not an original observation, but it took me too long to
| realize so I think it bears repeating: your personal website is
| also the one place where you have control over how much to write,
| how it looks to the reader and how long it stays up. Even though
| I'm a proponent of strict moderation on social media, it's
| ultimately a bad thing to hand over that kind of agency to the
| platforms.
| xena wrote:
| Sure, nobody may be reading it today, but eventually something
| you wrote becomes essential to someone else. Document what works
| and what doesn't. That helps us all learn.
| runfaster2000 wrote:
| This is all true. The only part that is potentially misleading is
| that the target doesn't need to be a blog. A blog is a fine
| target, however. The key activity is spending time to articulate
| a message with enough clarity that another person will understand
| what you meant and that they will conclude there is some value in
| it. There are lots of avenues for this.
|
| It's not limited to this, but in the workplace I think of this as
| "write it down culture". People who write things down often have
| the most tested and credible ideas, with the first and most
| important judge being themselves.
| glouwbug wrote:
| One important aspect I learned about blogging is that a post
| effectively "ships" a side project, deeming it complete. A blog
| post allows me to move onto the next thing. It is closure of
| sorts (glouw.com if anyone is interested in the style).
| simonw wrote:
| Yes! Absolutely this.
|
| I have a personal rule that the cost of doing a side project is
| I have to blog about it. No regrets on that at all, it's a
| small thing that can greatly increase the value you derive from
| the project.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Over a decade, I've learnt to blog as if no one will ever read my
| blog posts. With social referral traffic now completely dead, the
| only traffic I get to my blog is when my posts appear on Hacker
| News (https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=minimaxir.com), and
| even that is going down year-over-year.
|
| However, the _process_ of writing a blog post forces me to invent
| new workflows and is in itself very educational, so it 's not a
| waste of time or a mistake even if no one reads it.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Writing is incredibly fun and rewarding for me. It also makes you
| think harder about things that you're generally already
| interested in. And it gives you huge leverage: instead of trying
| to explain your thoughts to one or two people at a time, you do
| it once and potentially many thousands of people can read it.
| It's also a useful resource years later to look back on, like an
| intellectual history of your own interests. And the more you do
| it, the better you get at it.
| nonoesp wrote:
| > "If it's finished, the applause, the thanks, the gratitude are
| something else. Something extra and not part of what you created.
| If you play a beautiful song for two people or a thousand, it's
| the same song, and the amount of thanks you receive isn't part of
| that song." (Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception: How High Will You
| Fly?)
| RobinL wrote:
| A big reason I blog is that I find writing something down is
| essential to clarifying my thoughts.
|
| Once it's written down, I might as well put it online, and it has
| the added advantages that I can simply link to the material
| rather than having to explain it over and over again e.g. in
| emails.
| hddherman wrote:
| > You're not just writing for today's invisible audience. You're
| writing for:
|
| > Future you. Your posts become a time capsule of your evolving
| mind.
|
| Fully agree with that one. My own blog has become a public diary
| of my hobby and it's great to see what I've been up to and how
| wrong I was about certain predictions and assumptions, especially
| about the ones that say that I'm done reworking my home server
| setup, multiple times.
| susam wrote:
| I blog to keep a record of interesting things I've learnt and
| share it on the web, even if the only reader is my future self.
| After all, it's called a "web log" for a reason! The fact that
| the process of carefully considering and writing about a subject
| helps me gain a deeper understanding and strengthens my own grasp
| on the subject happens to be a bonus!
|
| In fact, my web server logs show that out of the 170 or so pages
| on my website, only about 7% receive regular traffic from
| visitors. The remaining 93% have got only myself as the reader.
|
| I've been web logging the last 25 years and I'll probably
| continue to do it for as long as I can. In fact, 25 years ago, it
| was just a website hosting a loose collection of pages. It took
| its current shape and form only around 2006 when blogging became
| fashionable!
| dwood_dev wrote:
| I generally blog about things that took a week+ of research and I
| want to save some other poor bastard the pain of what I had to
| piece together.
|
| This is especially useful because link-rot means that resources I
| was able to uncover might not be available in the future. A few
| years ago I did a massive amount of research into internals of
| old unixes for data recovery and maintenance of said systems in
| the modern era(machines attached to million dollar pieces of
| testing equipment go away when the machine does). I was
| maintaining and upgrading(mostly scsi2sd) and backing up systems
| that all predated y2k. Most of my research references are now
| dead links to nowhere. I now print to pdf as well as take
| archive.is links of all my referenced sources.
|
| I'm generally terrible about blogging, but I'm changing that for
| 2025. I'm now in a position where I'm solutions architecting a
| lot of things as my primary day job. This makes easy blog post
| subjects that not only clarify my thoughts and understanding, but
| end up being the basis for the internal documentation on the
| subject.
|
| A lot of what I now do is in terraform, cloudformation, golang,
| or Python. I make sure when I publish my blog post, I include a
| complete working example. For all my terraform, all one has to do
| is clone and run terraform apply, after satisfying the barebones
| prerequisites.
| hrkucuk wrote:
| A question for everybody on _counting_ your visitors : How do you
| do it? I am self hosting my blog on archlinux + nginx using an
| old laptop. I proxied it behind _cloudflared_ tunnel. On my Nginx
| access logs, All I see is mostly bots and for any visitor that
| does not identify as bots, I feel like they are still bots. I
| really can 't be sure. And Cloudflare analytics suggest that I
| have a little shy over 1 thousand of visitors in the last 1
| month, which also seem quite unlikely. I would love to hear your
| experiences on this! Thanks
| ghaff wrote:
| I just look at the numbers Google Blogger spits out. I'm sure
| they're overstated with respect to real users but I don't
| actually care.
|
| (I use blogger and, in fact, after much deliberation just
| decided to roll everything (personal and business) together on
| my existing template.) Anything else was just too much trouble
| and probably cost. Zero interest in self-hosting.
| ghaff wrote:
| One thing I think you see here is a lot of emphasis on the "side
| hustle." A blog may be supportive of the ways you really make
| money. But, if you're looking at a blog as some sort of
| reasonably direct income stream that you'd rather not do, you
| should probably move on.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| the idea that blogs are intended for an audience other than the
| blogger ( and interested parties, eg. colleagues at work, co-
| conspirators, etc ... ) is a misunderstanding and probably
| residue from the late 90s/00s "internet explosion"
| urda wrote:
| Blog because you want to, Blog because you can.
|
| I write both technical, and non-technical posts on mine. It is
| literally one of the few corners of the universe where I can say
| what goes, what shows, and how it all flows. It is a garden I
| tend for myself, but others are free to inspect.
| dijit wrote:
| I blog because I have to find it very difficult to take arguments
| online in very few words without pictures without citation.
|
| I blog because it forces me to understand the subject matter on a
| deeper level, to write long form, to keep things as interesting
| as as possible.. and of course the mere active writing increases
| my ability to retain information.
|
| I don't really care if you read it, though, if I'm having a
| disagreement online, I might care in those situations if you
| would read a specific post.
|
| I really don't need to be an online celebrity, it's not important
| even in the slightest. Ego does not help for anything.
|
| In fact, even when doing public speaking engagements, I often
| completely omit an introduction to myself. Because the subject
| matter should speak for itself, it should not be a reflection of
| my past accomplishments or the name that I have or desire to
| build into a brand.
| fragmede wrote:
| so LLMs can pick it up and advance the reach of the human race
| zoogeny wrote:
| Totally tangential, but I was thinking this morning about my
| experience as a kid when my parents forced me to be an alter boy
| at our local church. There are these occasional observances where
| the church is obligated to put on a special service, part of a
| liturgical calendar. Sometimes these happen at like 11am on a
| Wednesday. It was nice to get out of school to go and burn some
| incense and follow the priest around while he mumble prayers,
| instead of sitting bored out of my mind memorizing times tables
| or whatever.
|
| For the majority of these minor observances, almost no one showed
| up. Maybe you'd get a couple of old ladies but otherwise the
| church was completely empty. We'd be doing this elaborate stage
| show for no one.
|
| It made me think of a history YouTube video I watched about some
| ancient religion. The priests had a complex daily ritual
| including setting out meals for the Gods, saying certain prayers
| including certain physical movements like bowing, prostrating,
| raising their hands. They would have to do certain cleaning
| rituals including incense and sweeping. Super elaborate stuff.
| But it was all in an inner chamber and no one would come and even
| watch them. They just did this ritual for no one.
|
| I suppose I think it is interesting to see a parallel here. Like,
| us tech people are spiritual hermits, cargo-culting our own
| incantations. We're keeping a tradition alive that in only rare
| cases actually has an audience because we have a some faith in
| its utility.
| BirAdam wrote:
| I just enjoy reading and writing. My blogging used to be very
| infrequent tutorials, but I switched over to history. I get read
| now, but I still do it just because I enjoy it.
|
| HTTPS://www.abortretry.fail
| bawolff wrote:
| I have a blog that nobody reads (or very few anyways).
|
| The one exception was that one time i put some vacation pictures
| from portland. I dont understand how or why, but that got 10x the
| hits.
|
| It almost feels like there is an inverse relationship between
| effort and views.
|
| Regardless, the main reason i write is to try and sharpen my
| writing skills, something i feel like i was weak at historically.
| It has value in and of itself.
| dhosek wrote:
| I have no analytics or log analysis on my blog. The only way
| that I have any indication that it's getting read are the rare
| occasions when someone leaves a comment, although in one case,
| it was the author of a book I wrote about responding to a bit
| of wondering at the end of the post:
| https://www.dahosek.com/100-phi-socrates-cafe/
| kown7 wrote:
| and then my coworker comes up to me saying my blog post from
| years ago fixed his problem. It's a small world
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I'm sure chatGPT reads every one.
| User23 wrote:
| Edsger Dijkstra kept a kind of primitive blog on paper[1].
| Largely, so far as I can tell and with a few published
| exceptions, it was meant for himself.
|
| It's a goldmine of course. Personally I find some of his snarkier
| papers entertaining, but the real value is in seeing how his
| understanding of CS developed.
|
| [1] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/
| TeaVMFan wrote:
| I blog on technical topics as a reminder to my future self. I
| increasingly find myself needing the details of some command line
| or process from long ago, and having my own notes easily
| searchable is a great time saver. Hopefully it helps someone else
| too.
| arjie wrote:
| There's quite a few reasons I write a blog:
|
| * It'll eventually be scraped into an AI and my factual stuff
| being in there is good
|
| * It might help some random person who finds it
|
| * Maybe my friends will read it
|
| * Maybe my kids will read it when I die (and if I die prematurely
| they'll be able to form a shape of what their father is like)
|
| * Simply observing things is worthwhile to me
|
| It's not a brand building exercise or anything. In fact, I doubt
| very many non-bots visit my blog. Cloudflare reports 11k
| uniques/month but I think it's all bots. Also, in many cases it's
| notes for myself for the future. I have mine as a wiki, and I
| post blog stuff under the blog/ prefix.
|
| My wife and I are expecting a baby in a month or so and I've been
| chronicling what the process of pregnancy was like. I sometimes
| just wanted a "here's one path through it" to just get an idea of
| how this goes and found that hard. Most people write a lot of
| advice but I wanted to just chronicle the actual experience
| https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/index.php/Pregnancy
|
| Even though my wife and I have an unusual one (IVF with genetic
| embryo selection) maybe something in there will be useful through
| an LLM.
|
| Another one of the things it appears I'm at 99th percentile or
| higher at is getting facts into Wikipedia that other people have
| trouble doing. So sometimes I like to write about my experience
| doing that
| https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/index.php/Blog/2024-10-17/Path...
|
| One of the other last reasons for me to write a blog is that it's
| just sometimes so beautiful to read someone's human expression of
| personality and if I'm lucky someone who feels that way can read
| mine. A Hacker News Comment
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40650982) about a deleted
| Wikipedia page pointed me to an old mathematician's site and it's
| such a heartwarming and bittersweet feeling reading his joy and
| sadness:
| https://www.math.sci.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/m-mat/AKECHI/index.ht...
| but even Time Cube counts!
|
| Yeah, I did manage to rescue that Wikipedia article too. Made me
| happy :)
| XorNot wrote:
| Because it's a handy way to be able to remember what I was doing,
| and might help someone somewhere someday (frequently me if it's a
| slightly non-obvious thing that I find I need to remember later)
| lucasoshiro wrote:
| Writing something for others is teaching, and teaching is one of
| the steps of the Feynman technique. Even if you don't follow it,
| writing and teaching forces you to organize the subject in your
| head. You force yourself to make the subject clear to your
| audience, and you are part of your audience.
|
| If someone will read it or not is out of your control, and it's
| completely unpredictable.
|
| Using some examples of mine:
|
| 1. Once I wrote a blog post about writing a quicksort in Python
| using only lambdas, based on the lambda calculus theory which I
| found very interesting and challenging to explain in clear way.
| Some people liked it, but it was not proportional to the hard
| work involved: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38848905
|
| 2. Once a friend asked me why I write my scripts in Ruby, I told
| him a few reasons and I wrote in my blog just as a personal
| reference, to have in hands if someone else asks me the same
| thing. Turns out that it reached the #1 here in HN and even the
| creator of Ruby tweeted about it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40763640
|
| So, don't do it for the others. Do it for yourself. And I won't
| say "keep doing it and someday someone will see", I can't
| guarantee that, but a least you'll have a chance.
| cubefox wrote:
| Here is a somewhat different motivation:
|
| "A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find
| fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your
| inbox"
|
| https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query
| rustystump wrote:
| the journey.
|
| I humbly share my thoughts from around ~4 years ago on the same
| subject. It is all too easy to focus on outcome/results rather
| than the joy of the process.
|
| https://dgerrells.com/blog/journey-before-destination
| raybb wrote:
| The author says it's a myth that if you write it then they'll
| come.
|
| That may be mostly true but with the way recommendation engines
| like substance and social media get new content in front of
| people it's a little different.
|
| Last month I started a weekly roundup blog about urbanism and
| with relatively lite marketing efforts and the help of substack
| recommendations we have almost 100 subscribers already. So share
| it with the relevant parties but also take advantage of the algos
| if you can. That being said, I don't really have a plan to
| monetize so it's more of a passion project to inspire people to
| take initiative in their local setting.
|
| If you wanna see the project for yourself
| https://urbanismnow.substack.com
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I blog as if I'll have one reader: myself.
| sspiff wrote:
| Pretty much how I approach this as well. My about page reads:
| This website is place where I put some random notes.
| It mostly serves to remind my future self of how I configured or
| solved things in the past, though it may occasionally be useful
| to others as well.
| daitangio wrote:
| I blog from 2000 circa. I do very little advertising on my
| articles in gioorgi.com I write because I need to put down my
| throughts on a lot of different topics and/or just to take some
| notes. I hope to be able to keep my blog alive for at least 30
| years, and to retain my little freedom of saying everything I
| want. I do not have adsense, just a bit of amazon affiliate link,
| used just ad a service to reader.
| j45 wrote:
| You blog because what you blog about has value because it
| interests you, you give it value with your energy and time and
| because you are thinking and writing about it, not others.
|
| You blog to write.
|
| You write to explore and develop your thoughts ideas and
| feelings.
|
| You write publicly because you appreciate others who you found
| doing the same
| fuzztester wrote:
| apart from all the other points mentioned, the blogger can read
| it.
|
| (I have not read all the comments yet, only a few, maybe someone
| has already said this.)
|
| obviously you can do that on your own computer too, but with an
| online blog, you can read it from anywhere, on any usable device,
| with an internet connection.
|
| you can read your own thoughts or code or whatever from 10 years
| or more ago.
|
| and you can keep your blog private to yourself if you want, on
| those blogging platforms that support that.
| kernelRiot wrote:
| This post triggered a flood of thoughts that I added to my own
| "knowledge garden" at
| https://notes.kyletolle.com/notes/Why+Do+Anything
|
| tl;dr - The author presents multiple ways to find a reason for
| completing work when you're missing a reason. I've found, though,
| that enjoying the act of writing itself is more meaningful for
| me. The completed works are incidental and not the end goal that
| makes it worthwhile. So I'd argue that you should blog because
| you enjoy writing the blog. If you don't enjoy it, no amount of
| readership will be worthwhile.
| autoexec wrote:
| I say write for yourself. Not even 'future you'. The act of
| writing alone is rewarding which is why for ages now people have
| kept journals. Personally, I'd rather keep that stuff offline,
| but online or offline there's a lot to be gained from the
| process. Maybe no one else ever finds a blog beyond the AI and
| data brokers who will eventually scrape it, but that's no reason
| for people not to blog if it's something they enjoy.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Dance as if no one is watching, blog as if someone will read it
| someday.
| openrisk wrote:
| Most science papers are only read by a tiny circle of experts,
| maybe a dozen or so. The process still works out. The critical
| challenge is to have _some_ quality human readership (instead of
| the AI bot brigade and random zero second clicks).
|
| Theoretically the internet would have enabled the long tail,
| making tiny domain focused niches viable. In practice discovery
| is the most gamed algorithm in existence. Unless you have the
| resources and inclination to spend quality time towards useless
| "SEO" nobody knows you are alive.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Writing is thinking.
| iamwil wrote:
| Recently, I paid for OpenAI for Deep Research. I asked it about a
| topic I'm actively working on and researching: reactivity and
| effect systems. Deep Research ended up using my blog as a part of
| its research.
|
| At first, I wasn't sure what to make of it. But reading the
| source, my blog post reminded me of some ideas I had consciously
| forgotten. The Deep Research report gathered some of those idea
| and repurposed it in an interesting way. So writing a blog is now
| a way to resurface ideas you might have forgotten yourself back
| to you, a kind of "memories" or "timehop" feature.
| aadhavans wrote:
| The comparison to street photography is very apt. My blogs are
| usually a snapshot of how I feel at a given moment in time. Even
| if they're just technical posts, they often reflect my
| understanding when I wrote them.
|
| It's also fun to go back a year later to see how
| stupid/naive/ignorant I was 'back then'.
| thr0waway001 wrote:
| So we can feed AI.
|
| All kidding aside, it's something great to point at something
| when applying for a job. I'll just say this as a person looking
| at a candidate: I'm probably not gonna look at your Github.
| Especially if it's filled with simple tutorials from a book or
| from YouTube that a bunch of other people have followed.
|
| I'm more likely to look at stuff like a blog post if I really
| want to gauge your expertise on a subject and see your attention
| to detail.
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