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I've tried several platforms for blogging over the years. This latest one promises to let me own the content, no ads, and I can set up a subscription program fo

I've tried several platforms for blogging over the years. This latest one promises to let me own the content, no ads, and I can set up a subscription program for folks who want to participate more. I thought about 2 bucks a month. It would be an experiment to see if when people pay they tend to argue less and post less low-effort stuff. I suspect this is the case, but it'll be interesting playing around with the idea.

pavel_lishin 6y ago
Maybe you own the content, and maybe there's no ads, but it sure looks like you don't get to control the content - and a popup is obnoxious whether it's selling you diet pills, or the ability to do exactly the thing you're doing.
- DanielBMarkham 6y ago
  Thanks for engaging. I'm perfectly happy switching to something new. I've only been on this place for six weeks or so. But I'm a bit conflicted about options. Looking at the front page of HN on any given day, a significant portion of the top comments are not about the material, but about the site itself: the fonts are too big, the layout is hard-to-read, it's a paywall, Medium has gone to crap, the site shouldn't be trusted, the load times are too long, the page is too heavy, and so on. (You have to know what I'm talking about here) I'm a coder, so I can (and have) put content in all kinds of places. I could give you a detailed list of a dozen or so that I've tried, from plain html/js on my own server to Git Pages and this current experiment. The problem is that I have _yet_ to use any of these where I didn't get some sort of meta comment like yours. I believe, and I hope I'm wrong, that the _control_ issue you mention is never going to go away. It's just going to be an issue of what trade-offs people are willing to make for ease-of-use. Yeah, I could drop web pages and multi-media content on AWS and set up my own membership and streaming services. Then I could get into multi-format streaming, SAML, CDN configuration, and a hundred other technical issues that I'd love to play with, but have nothing at all with trying to create some kind of useful content out of my career experiences so far. So thanks, and I agree, but I'm still kind of at a loss at what to do. If more people complain I'll send the admins an email. I could leave, but to where? Meh. EDIT: If I wasn't clear enough, I don't like the popup either.
  - pavel_lishin 6y ago
    Yeah. I'm sorry that today it's my turn to bother you with nitpicking, without offering any good solutions. For what it's worth, my "blog" with its single post is hosted on my own domain, on a server I pay for. It works for me, but I have zero readers, and don't plan on dealing with traffic spikes! If it's any consolation, I would argue that font choice is a matter of taste, whereas a popup is always rude.

pavel_lishin 6y ago

Maybe you own the content, and maybe there's no ads, but it sure looks like you don't get to control the content - and a popup is obnoxious whether it's selling you diet pills, or the ability to do exactly the thing you're doing.

DanielBMarkham 6y ago
Thanks for engaging. I'm perfectly happy switching to something new. I've only been on this place for six weeks or so. But I'm a bit conflicted about options. Looking at the front page of HN on any given day, a significant portion of the top comments are not about the material, but about the site itself: the fonts are too big, the layout is hard-to-read, it's a paywall, Medium has gone to crap, the site shouldn't be trusted, the load times are too long, the page is too heavy, and so on. (You have to know what I'm talking about here) I'm a coder, so I can (and have) put content in all kinds of places. I could give you a detailed list of a dozen or so that I've tried, from plain html/js on my own server to Git Pages and this current experiment. The problem is that I have _yet_ to use any of these where I didn't get some sort of meta comment like yours. I believe, and I hope I'm wrong, that the _control_ issue you mention is never going to go away. It's just going to be an issue of what trade-offs people are willing to make for ease-of-use. Yeah, I could drop web pages and multi-media content on AWS and set up my own membership and streaming services. Then I could get into multi-format streaming, SAML, CDN configuration, and a hundred other technical issues that I'd love to play with, but have nothing at all with trying to create some kind of useful content out of my career experiences so far. So thanks, and I agree, but I'm still kind of at a loss at what to do. If more people complain I'll send the admins an email. I could leave, but to where? Meh. EDIT: If I wasn't clear enough, I don't like the popup either.
- pavel_lishin 6y ago
  Yeah. I'm sorry that today it's my turn to bother you with nitpicking, without offering any good solutions. For what it's worth, my "blog" with its single post is hosted on my own domain, on a server I pay for. It works for me, but I have zero readers, and don't plan on dealing with traffic spikes! If it's any consolation, I would argue that font choice is a matter of taste, whereas a popup is always rude.