5 ms·

Let's be honest with ourselves. The best way to make your content last for a long time is to host it on a platform that is free and very successful. For example

by whack 7y ago

Let's be honest with ourselves. The best way to make your content last for a long time is to host it on a platform that is free and very successful. For example, whatever photos I posted on Facebook 12 years ago? Still alive and kicking. The articles I've published on wordpress.com 7 years ago? Still in mint condition, with 0 maintenance required. In comparison, the websites that I've built and hosted or deployed myself, have constantly required periodic work just to "keep the lights on". I went out of my way to make this as minimal and cheap as possible, but even then, it hasn't been nearly as simple as the content I've published on wordpress. At some point, people's priorities change. Perhaps due to new additions to the family, medical circumstances, or even prolonged unemployment. And when that happens, even the smallest amount of upkeep, whether it is financial, technical or simply logistical, becomes something they have no interest in engaging with. If we really want our content to last, not just for 10 years but for a generation, our best bet is to publish it on a platform like wordpress.com. One which requires literally zero maintenance, and where all tech infrastructure is completely abstracted away from you. I know this isn't going to be a popular idea with the HN crowd, and I do not blame anyone at all for wanting to keep control over their content. People are free to optimize along whatever dimensions they wish. But if I had to bet on longevity, I would bet every time on the wordpress article over the self-hosted one.

winfred 7y ago
>Let's be honest with ourselves. The best way to make your content last for a long time is to host it on a platform that is free and very successful. For example, whatever photos I posted on Facebook 12 years ago? Still alive and kicking. The articles I've published on wordpress.com 7 years ago? Still in mint condition, with 0 maintenance required. You view on timeline is too short. We're not talking about keeping something online for 7 years, but for 70. If I had followed your advice a few years ago, I would have deployed on Geocities. Do you know what happened to those websites? The question is, is wordpress going to be around in 70 years? No one knows. But that static HTML page will still render fine, even if it is running in a backward compatibility mode on your neurolink interface.
- marc_io 7y ago
  You can export your WordPress website to static HTML easily with the help of a free plugin.
  - chippy 7y ago
    The article addresses this point. This is the kind of hurdle that makes pages not last. The point is that yes we can spend time each few years migrating and maintaining but we shouldnt have to.
- filereaper 7y ago
  Clearly the only reasonable way is to store it in a Mainframe...in EBCDIC It'll live forever... /s
  - berbec 7y ago
    Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of punch cards.
- whack 7y ago
  > The question is, is wordpress going to be around in 70 years? No one knows. But that static HTML page will still render fine The question isn't whether wordpress will be around in 70 years, but whether it will outlast your self-hosted website. Anything that is self-hosted requires significantly more financial/logistical maintenance, and what is the likelihood of someone continuing to do that for 70 years?
  - lunchables 7y ago
    For me it's very easy because those domains are also tied to my email and all of my other hosted services (gitea, tt-rss, etc.) all use the same domain. So it's very easy to remember to keep them all alive and active. I've had domain names active far longer than Wordpress has existed.
- einpoklum 7y ago
saagarjha 7y ago
If Jekyll died tomorrow, I still have the HTML to keep the website running, more or less. It's a build step in my pipeline but not one that abstracts it in such a way that I cannot use the final product as my archive. I'm not sure that a CMS could let me do the same.
- ValueNull 7y ago
  Not to mention that you’d still be able to use Jekyll yourself for as long as you’d like, it being locally installable and open source.
tzfld 7y ago
>to host it on a platform that is free and very successful Yes, from a technical pow, but what about deplatforming? I think it is a bigger risk to lose data than any framework/technology deprecation. I would definitely not rely on any platform keeping my data.

by whack 7y ago

winfred 7y ago

>Let's be honest with ourselves. The best way to make your content last for a long time is to host it on a platform that is free and very successful. For example, whatever photos I posted on Facebook 12 years ago? Still alive and kicking. The articles I've published on wordpress.com 7 years ago? Still in mint condition, with 0 maintenance required. You view on timeline is too short. We're not talking about keeping something online for 7 years, but for 70. If I had followed your advice a few years ago, I would have deployed on Geocities. Do you know what happened to those websites? The question is, is wordpress going to be around in 70 years? No one knows. But that static HTML page will still render fine, even if it is running in a backward compatibility mode on your neurolink interface.

marc_io 7y ago
You can export your WordPress website to static HTML easily with the help of a free plugin.
- chippy 7y ago
  The article addresses this point. This is the kind of hurdle that makes pages not last. The point is that yes we can spend time each few years migrating and maintaining but we shouldnt have to.
filereaper 7y ago
Clearly the only reasonable way is to store it in a Mainframe...in EBCDIC It'll live forever... /s
- berbec 7y ago
  Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of punch cards.
whack 7y ago
> The question is, is wordpress going to be around in 70 years? No one knows. But that static HTML page will still render fine The question isn't whether wordpress will be around in 70 years, but whether it will outlast your self-hosted website. Anything that is self-hosted requires significantly more financial/logistical maintenance, and what is the likelihood of someone continuing to do that for 70 years?
- lunchables 7y ago
  For me it's very easy because those domains are also tied to my email and all of my other hosted services (gitea, tt-rss, etc.) all use the same domain. So it's very easy to remember to keep them all alive and active. I've had domain names active far longer than Wordpress has existed.
einpoklum 7y ago

saagarjha 7y ago

If Jekyll died tomorrow, I still have the HTML to keep the website running, more or less. It's a build step in my pipeline but not one that abstracts it in such a way that I cannot use the final product as my archive. I'm not sure that a CMS could let me do the same.

ValueNull 7y ago
Not to mention that you’d still be able to use Jekyll yourself for as long as you’d like, it being locally installable and open source.

tzfld 7y ago

>to host it on a platform that is free and very successful Yes, from a technical pow, but what about deplatforming? I think it is a bigger risk to lose data than any framework/technology deprecation. I would definitely not rely on any platform keeping my data.