21 ms·

Start a fucking blog

370 points by xyzal 4y ago

sam345 4y ago
The f*ing use of f*k in domains, headlines, etc io get f*ing noticed is f**ing getting old
- rideontime 4y ago
  Yeah, this is very 2007 behavior.
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ymolodtsov 4y ago
The key problem here is that most of my friends will never have a blog. The barrier to create one is just too much, and I'm not only talking about the technical ones. It's a much lesser commitment to post a photo on Instagram with a few lines. And actually see your friends seeing it, so you don't feel like you're wasting time.
leoplct 4y ago
Forking from github, editing and deploying to netlify is not easy for a non-developer. That's why they use Substack, Ghost, Wordpress.com etc.
pmarreck 4y ago
Is there a site that will 1) let you pick an available domain name 2) set up the hosting, the blog CMS, its authentication, and all the routing for you 3) show you the cost, and just let you pay it? Because as much as I can do all this stuff manually, that would be pretty sweet to automate, for the folks who just want to "start a fucking blog" and not have to become sysadmins
- luplex 4y ago
  There are lots. Wordpress.com comes to mind
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    And as the middle ground, most reputable web hosters (the kind where you buy a domain with 50GB space on shared hosting that runs mostly PHP) have a one-click Wordpress setup. That way you have a base install up and running in five minutes, but can customize as much as you want if you ever want to. Doesn't come with preconfigured caching though, so maybe spend five minutes setting that up.
- icepat 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure that a a lot of existing hosting services let you do that. Even hosted Wordpress lets you do that.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  Yeah like almost any web hosting company will provide you with that, they all have a set of services you can setup on your hosting in one click.
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  Yes. Tons of sites like Hostinger and similar that handle basically everything start to finish to set up a blog.
- mdrzn 4y ago
  OVH or any other "Web hosting" provider usually will let you pick a domain, choose a CMS to install (which is why Wordpress is everywhere) and be online in 5 minutes to post in your blog. If you go the Netlify route, YMMV.
  - spirit557 4y ago
    just make sure YOU own the domain
- 4y ago
ohelabs 4y ago
Check out https://ghost.org/pricing/ https://ghost.org/pricing/ it’s exactly what you are asking for.
- ohadron 4y ago
  That is extremely expensive if all you need is a place to host your thoughts available to a wide audience. ($15/mo basic tier, and if I drag the slider to 20k 'members' the 'creator' tier is at $149/mo billed annually).
  - m3nu 4y ago
    Ghost is run by a foundation with a hard limit on revenue. They don't need more users at this point.
    - ohadron 4y ago
      Fair enough. But that probably means that they are currently not a good fit for someone looking to move their Twitter presence to a blog.
      - m3nu 4y ago
        They are still pushing FOSS adoption and publish bugfixes regularly. The aim just isn't to have many cheap hosting users directly. Not speaking for the project here. Just what I understood from conversations with devs.
      - m3nu 4y ago
        Personally, I think the combination of blog, newsletter and optional monetization is a good fit for many.
  - dspillett 4y ago
    Ghost is self-hostable, and you should be able to get a VPS matching the system requirements for $5/mo unless you get properly popular so need more hosting umph. Though Ghost would be overkill for a really simple blog, despite its staring point as intending to be just enough tech to host content well (a reaction to what WordPress has/had become).
m3nu 4y ago
At PikaPods we have Ghost and WordPress to run with a few clicks. Comes with a subdomain, but can also add your own domain: https://www.pikapods.com/apps#blog https://www.pikapods.com/apps#blog
hcks 4y ago
I’m not sure to understand the point of setting up your own website in 2023. I mean it’s a fun endeavour by itself but if the point is really to communicate you’re 100% better of using one of the numerous blogging / microblogging option.
- durnygbur 4y ago
  For example Twitter? Let me give you few counter arguments in the subsequent posts... (1/14) or Reddit? oooopsie... I'm banned again.
- mylons 4y ago
  why are you 100% better off using a platform that can censor and kick you off?
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    Because in 99.99% of cases they won't and you'll benefit from mass viewership? If you keep backups you can always go on your own in case that happens, and you also get the controversy to boost interest.
    - forgotpwd16 4y ago
      >benefit from mass viewership Assuming that's something a blog's author cares about. But even if that is, you can always share a link to social media.
      - moffkalast 4y ago
        Idk, it sound easier for followers to just automatically get notified of a new post instead of having to manually shill it every time.
    - mylons 4y ago
      you can use those platforms to market your blog. i’m literally doing this and getting thousands of views a month on a 2 month old site. that’s not filling the 99.99% — maybe just the unimaginative
gfodor 4y ago
In this spirit I recently released a project to let you deploy multiplayer 3D worlds using static HTML: webspaces.space
AstixAndBelix 4y ago
This website is terrible. Blog navbar above the blog's title? The undertitle has a full stop at the end? The first paragraph is unexplainably bigger than the rest and all the spacings are wrong and too wide. This is very strange since the author of this website actually has his own blog which is nicely designed, but for some reason he really went out of his way to make this page into a mess. Which is even stranger because you'd think he'd put all his skill into a page dedicated to reaching out and actually convincing people
- o_1 4y ago
  I think this is artistic rage based design
  - AstixAndBelix 4y ago
    The point of motherfuckingwebsite is to show that a minimalist page can still look good and be useful. This is because the website has an agenda and wants to convince people. This page on the other hand looks and feels really terrible, so I don't get how anyone could be convinced of starting a blog from this
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  >Blog navbar above the blog's title? The undertitle has a full stop at the end? The first paragraph is unexplainably bigger than the rest and all the spacings are wrong and too wide. And those are objectively bad enough to call the site terrible according to which metric?
derrida 4y ago
The person that wrote this needs some training in swearing as it's a bit repetitive, I suggest they visit Australia.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Swearing? I had a faint hope that the OP suggests publishing a diary of sex adventures. Alas.
  - freetanga 4y ago
    Given the average crowd, it would be a one-handed version of things….
- dspillett 4y ago
  I assume they were aping motherfuckingwebsite.com and its descendents, so it may not be quite their usual style.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Don't have to assume: > This site was heavily influenced by the geniuses behind Motherfucking Website and Better Motherfucking Website.
- LastNevadan 4y ago
  I had an Australian manager once. To live to up the stereotypes of Australia, he had two things: a map that was "upside down", with south up and therefore with Australia at the top of the globe. The second was a book of Australian slang and swear words. One of the words in the dictionary was "dickhead," who definition was this: "A person of no consequence. One's boss is invariably a dickhead." Lol.
  - derrida 4y ago
    I'm Australian. Wait, is "dickhead" not common in American and Europe? It's extremely common here I just assumed it was Queens English.
hiidrew 4y ago
I found this option recently: https://www.planetable.xyz/ https://www.planetable.xyz/ If you have an ENS domain you can spin up a quick blog using that and IPFS. For example, mine is werdy.eth.limo
blamazon 4y ago
The linguistic style is an overt reference to 'motherfuckingwebsite.com': https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
- canadianfella 4y ago
  It says so on the page.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    > It says so on the fucking page. FTFY
  - Joeboy 4y ago
    Hence "overt".
    - iiv 4y ago
      > The content is an overt attempt to convince you to start a blog. That's a bit of a useless comment, isn't it?
      - blamazon 4y ago
        Aforementioned comment maker here. My justification is that, per my understanding of the HN guidelines, it's not that interesting to discuss whether folks read the article completely or not. This is why I phrased it that way - I think it's an important nugget of information but many folks have limited time to read, or were turned off by the style, and may have not scrolled all the way to the footer to see that. I thought that comment might help more discussion of bloggery by hand waving the controversial style as an imperfect homage to something intentionally crude. To that end I also figured there was potential discussion in how OP article doesn't quite hit the same poetic cadence as motherfuckingwebsite.
Brajeshwar 4y ago
I like SimpleCSS[1] (used on this website). I have used that quite a few times to quickly launch simple websites. The creator is here on HackerNews. 1. https://simplecss.org https://simplecss.org
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  Creator is the same one that made the submitted site. And thanks for link. Looks nice.
  - Brajeshwar 4y ago
    Isn't it cool. I will remember that site because I forked mine out of it. ;-) https://brajeshwar.com https://brajeshwar.com
    - TurkishPoptart 4y ago
      I LOVE the darkmode toggle. Congrats!
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jacksnipe 4y ago
I don’t have a blog because it strikes me as more likely to hurt me than harm me.
breck 4y ago
Also, put down Markdown and give our Scroll a try: https://scroll.pub https://scroll.pub It now powers sites like my own blog (https://breckyunits.com/ https://breckyunits.com/), knowledge bases like PLDB.com, and our first new public domain daily newspaper called the Long Beach Pub (https://longbeach.pub/1-3-2023.html https://longbeach.pub/1-3-2023.html).
catapart 4y ago
Blogs aren't "realtime", so they don't solve any problems that people went to social media for. If you're serious about people "just starting blogs" you need a proof of concept that centralizes various blogs into an updating feed of subscribed blogs. This isn't insurmountable. It's actually pretty simple, in a technical sense. The real trick is to get blogs to play along by providing an api endpoint that will enable a feeds to be generated in the ways that people use them (latest, hashtags, interest relevancy, searchability, etc), as well as endpoints that allow users to interact with them (comments, notifications, etc). Some of that is currently done with RSS, others will need a new (preferably less verbose) form of syndication. You could even use simple iframes as the delivery mechanism for the blog content, that way the blogs still get their ad-impressions. So long as the posts showed up in a curated feed, without needing to actually click through to anything, it would be fine. The only other thing you would need is a sign-up process that is as simple as facebook or twitter. To the point where you might not even be sure you're creating a "blog", if that wasn't your explicit intention. So yeah; when that platform/protocol becomes available, I'd say blogs are the silver bullet! Until then, the idea that we should all go back to scouring the net for bookmark-able content, or dealing with the static interaction of an RSS feed, is a non-starter. We didn't make/choose social media because it was useless. We did it because it was easy. That has to be a priority in any suggested alternative.
- alt227 4y ago
  Doesnt this go against the sentiment of the article? It makes a heavy point about nobody being able to control or censor what you have to say. As soon as you give power to an aggregator, thats a cetral point which can control/censor the content.
  - catapart 4y ago
    Nah. The point, here, is those blog endpoints. That syndicates the blog to anyone with a browser. If one aggregator decides to cut you off, then your audience can always find another aggregator. Or, if you're particularly egregious, and no aggregators will host you, they can always go directly to your blog (aggregators have done the hard work of advertising your content already), or they can build their own aggregator and tell the faithful to join them, there. It's "freedom of speech without freedom of reach". Or whatever buzz phrase we're using to describe it, these days.
nixcraft 4y ago
For non-tech folks, I helped a few, and they all loved WordPress. They have simple pricing and a good mobile app with decent support https://wordpress.com/pricing/ https://wordpress.com/pricing/. Of course, there are other options, too like Ghost Pro https://ghost.org/pricing/ https://ghost.org/pricing/
- esskay 4y ago
  Software devs dont let friends use Wordpress. (I kid of course but would never touch it myself for the obvious problems it has)
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    I use it all the time. What are these "obvious" problems?
    - esskay 4y ago
      I think this (and the overall discussion) cover it better than I ever could in a single post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30172268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30172268 However from a personal level the main two ones for me are the poor quality of its codebase and the lack of care or common sense around the official plugin repository, bordering on outright incompetence on their part for allowing unvetted and highly dangerous plugins to stay on the official repo. Honestly as a developer for going on 20 years in a professional capacity I physically recoil at the absolute awfulnes of the codebase.
      - hestefisk 4y ago
        It might be poor code, but it runs pretty much everywhere and is very popular :)
      - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
        Fair 'nuff. But it still works fine for my blogs, and I've not had any issues. I also know a lot of folks that use it for sites. What are the alternatives? Remember that most of the folks I work with are far, far from tech wizards.
bjt2n3904 4y ago
POSSE is a fun acronym. Loving the trend towards owning your platform.
- mxuribe 4y ago
  The POSSE term was popularized *years ago* by the Indie Web group: https://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE ....Of course, its quite nice that present-day trend is picking it up a tad. :-)
jpe90 4y ago
i just migrated my blog off my vps to sourcehut pages last night, it was easy peasy https://srht.site/quickstart https://srht.site/quickstart
revskill 4y ago
The hard part is not related to blogging as i see. It's related to CI/CD, domain, testing stuff. Because maintainance is not free.
- crims0n 4y ago
  Started a blog some time ago with AWS Lightsail... was like 5 USD a month and all you had to take care of (after initial setup) was security updates and cert renewal. Your point is well taken, but I think there are relatively cheap and low maintenance options out there that "normal" people who are technically inclined can handle.
- dspillett 4y ago
  For a simple blog the hard parts are: * having something to blog about * having/arranging time to write and (if needed) edit If you have a CI/CD pipeline of any complexity at all for a blog, then either you are sharing infrastructure with other projects¹ or you are overcomplicating things!² -- [1] perhaps your blog is largely related to dev so shares your dev/documentation resources [2] no judgement: I'm capable of overcomplicating everything!
  - revskill 4y ago
    OK, think about one use case. What if you want introduce some diagramming or Latex rendering in your blog ? In this case, if your original tooling doesn't support, you need to re-invent somehow .
    - idontpost 4y ago
      [dead]
    - dspillett 4y ago
      > What if you want introduce some diagramming or Latex rendering in your blog ? Then you are starting to step beyond what I was referring to as “a simple blog” (text, formatting, maybe some pictures or SVG). Though there are options that don't require a CI/CD pipeline. Depending on what Latext you need MathJax may do the trick (just include the JS in your standard page header, and drop the Latex code straight in inline where needed as per their standard example: https://jsbin.com/?html,output https://jsbin.com/?html,output. There are similar charting options like mermaid too. I don't know of inline charting options off the top of my head but I expect several exist.
c-fe 4y ago
FYI this website is blocked at my work as SOPHOS categorises it as "Sexually Explicit"
- crims0n 4y ago
  Palo Alto has a quick and easy site to recategorize URL and was thinking the same would exist for SOPHOS but... nope. Support forms tell you to put in a feature request - what a joke.
- falcolas 4y ago
  Well, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, there is a lot of fucking all over the site.
- pjc50 4y ago
  And this is an advantage of using a big aggregated site like Twitter is that you're "too big to block".
terrib1e 4y ago
I appreciate the spirit of this but the word fuck is all about how you deliver it. This article comes off a bit crass. Personally, as I get older, I realize it's more fun to find substitution words like "fiddlesticks" or the even more colloquial word, "fudge". Especially when youre so upset that all you want to do is say fuck.
joemaller1 4y ago
> They can’t ban you from your own blog. They can’t silence you. Imagine believing this in 2023.
- rodolphoarruda 4y ago
  Yes. In Brazil, a single judge can issue an order that makes your website inaccessible to anyone within the country, plus cancel all your social media presence at once. All that in a matter of hours.
- cookieswumchorr 4y ago
  depends on your physical location. and even if it's a rather unfortunate one you might get away with using tor or similar
- ghaff 4y ago
  There are degrees of everything. At the end of the day, anything can be cut off from the network. But the standards for doing so can differ significantly.
- drowsspa 4y ago
  There's a good case to be made that the real service social networks offer is moderation. It seems pretty well established that most people don't want to be in a wild west online, and that's why decentralization fails.
- enumjorge 4y ago
  One of the most notorious examples of banning was that of Trump from Twitter. He went and built his own. I've seen news report on his "tweets" (or whatever they're called on his platform) as if they were on Twitter. Banned? Yes. Silenced? No.
- vasqw 4y ago
  He must not know about kiwi farms.
- jmull 4y ago
  Black-and-white thinking leads absolutely nowhere. Maybe in 2023 we can agree to leave it behind? I think it's pretty obvious that a self-published blog provides more freedom to publish what and how you want, and that's valuable, even if it's not absolute freedom.
naillo 4y ago
Wouldn't surprise me if netlify eventually starts taking down sites based on some content moderation rationale, so have a plan B for that. But everything else I agree with.
Damogran6 4y ago
It's not the Blog I have a problem with, it's building the audience. I suck at self promotion, and my soap-box isn't close enough to a steady stream of passers-by.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Adjust your goal from "Build An Audience" to "Publishing stuff I myself would want to read if it existed" and the audience will find you eventually, as long as you follow POSSE (https://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE) and have genuine posts.
  - cookieswumchorr 4y ago
    any idea how good the tooling mentioned there is? its the key to successfully applying this strategy, the best way would be to have it as a part of your blogging software/platform of choice and just working. because no one wants to do the monkey work of reposting everywhere
    - capableweb 4y ago
      Not sure you need a lot of tooling unless you publish many articles per week. If you're just doing one article per month, linking them (not reposting, but sharing a link: "syndication") on 5-6 platforms would take you a couple of minutes at most.
    - aksss 4y ago
      Automated cross-posting is pretty well-trod territory.
- maxehmookau 4y ago
  Why do you need to self-promote? You don't need to build an audience. Write for you, not for anyone else.
  - Damogran6 4y ago
apetresc 4y ago
Coulda had startafucking.blog for less than $10 USD!
tamaharbor 4y ago
How fucking ridiculous.
ketanmaheshwari 4y ago
Too much and unnecessary swearing.
- Finnucane 4y ago
  Completely fucking superfluous and gratuitous shit, indeed.
z3t4 4y ago
"Bloggers" till exist, but they are now called Influencers and have monetized their vlogging, and have expanded to the mainstream which can not read an article longer then 240 characters, and an attention span of 2 seconds, so they use images and video instead.
throw0101a 4y ago
For 'normal' people that don't want to get into running git, there is also: * https://www.blogger.com/about/ https://www.blogger.com/about/ * https://wordpress.com https://wordpress.com
- f0e4c2f7 4y ago
  I've heard ghost.org offers some interesting options around self hosting and owning your content.
  - MikusR 4y ago
    Unfortunately Ghost is made by people that have no idea what a cdn is. And can't tell a difference between their own code and a third party theme.
  - aksss 4y ago
    Ghost is an idea for the future that is presently less than a shadow of the capabilities of Wordpress. And it’s been that way for years.
- l0b0 4y ago
  I've used both, and they make it really complex to move away. After finally biting the bullet and migrating[1] from Wordpress to Jekyll, there was a lot of work involved in getting the Wordpress exported files even barely presentable. [1] https://gitlab.com/engmark/engmark.gitlab.io/ https://gitlab.com/engmark/engmark.gitlab.io/
- WesSouza 4y ago
  For development and technology oriented content: * https://dev.to/ https://dev.to/
  - forgotpwd16 4y ago
    Worth noting that dev.to (and hashnode.com that someone else mentioned) has such a bad reputation for low-effort low-quality posts that's shadowbanned on HN. And nothing of value was lost meme is very applicable.
WesSouza 4y ago
No, too much work for no audience.
makach 4y ago
Nah I'd rather keep posting these fucking answers and get fucking downvotes instead
29athrowaway 4y ago
Social networks was what succeeded instant messaging and blogs/personal websites. Now people are reverting back to blogs and instant messaging. Why? because social networks were a mistake.
footlose_3815 4y ago
I love this. I always thought the biggest strength of the internet in the late 2000s was the tiny blogs that brought the world to you. Their feelings on their other page sum my feelings completely: https://thewebisfucked.com/ https://thewebisfucked.com/ Nowadays, podcasts and social media sites try to do that, but it's impromptu and attention-thirsty wannabes, bad actors, promotional bullshit, nation state actors crowding the space. If you got good words, people will read. I think I will start my blog
Tepix 4y ago
Man i like that this blog has no fucking javascript whatsoever.
- e61133e3 4y ago
  and no trackers.. no Facebook like buttons.. no tweet counters.. none of that shit.
WesSouza 4y ago
> Why the fuck are you still using Twitter? The author clearly doesn't understand the concept of audience. I have thousands of followers on Twitter, just hundreds on Mastodon. We can't move, we can only transition and hope others follow. Also, don't expect a lot of people to read your blog, unless you have a very hot take, like this post lol
- SamBorick 4y ago
  which would you rather have, thousands of people who maybe see your tweets, or a few people who actually engage with what you care about? numbers vs community.
  - djbebs 4y ago
    Why do you believe there is more engagement in mastodon than in a platform designed to maximize engagement?
    - SamBorick 4y ago
      I don't believe it, its true. I was on twitter for 7 years. Hundreds of followers, thousands of tweets. Maybe 6 actual replies in that time. I've been on mastodon for 5 years now. I have people I'd genuinely call friends. A community. Regular meaningful engagement with actual humans about the stuff we make and share with each other. Twitter isn't designed for engagement between people. its designed to make money by getting you to engage with twitter as a platform.
    - kevq 4y ago
      I think you misspelled “profit” there. Engagement isn't the driver for the algorithm, profit is. It’s all about showing “fresh” content on every refresh so they have your eyes longer, and therefore more ad revenue. Masto is chronological, so there’s WAY more chance of natural discovery of content. It’s not buried by the algorithm because it doesn’t align with the hot take of the day, or isn't “trending”. I’ve personally found Mastodon to be far more engaging than Twitter, but that’s probably not going to be the se for everyone.
gk1 4y ago
Stating a blog is easy. Posting regularly is fucking hard.
- kabanossen 4y ago
  On the other hand, you don't have to post regularly.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Sure, if you don't care about making money.
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azangru 4y ago
So here's my question about static-site generators, such as the one that the linked site recommends. They seem fine for lengthy prose. You probably aren't going to write that many long-form blogs anyway — in the vicinity of several hundreds, maybe. After many years. So that's fine. But what I've discovered about my writing habits is that I mostly tend to write short notes, about the size of a Hacker News comment. And those can easily number in thousands after several years of writing. So how well is a static site generator suited for this? Do I want to build thousands of pages every time I start the site locally? I probably don't. But I can't find a reasonable static-site generator that will only build the requested pages locally, and build everything when deployed. It's probably also silly to pre-generate a static html page for every such short posted note. What's the most appropriate solution for such a writing pattern? Bite the bullet and set up a Wordpress or a Mastodon instance? That's a bit depressing.
- turmeric_root 4y ago
  I have a single HTML file with notes like this on my site. it's not the prettiest but literally no one else is going to read it anyways.
- underdeserver 4y ago
  Not sure it's that bad. Small, static text with minimal includes might be 300 bytes of overhead. What's the harm in having a few thousand of these?
- Brajeshwar 4y ago
  You don't need to run and build the site every time. Jekyll crawls to a halt on my website if I build it locally when I write. So, I just write in Obsidian, iAWriter, or Sublime Text. The articles are sometimes un-finished, to-be-edited. I push them and Github does the magic. Now, replace Jekyll with any SSG and let a tool handle the build (Netlify, Vercel, CloudFlare Pages). For your specific tweet/comment like post, I remember deploying quite a few instances of something called "P2" from WordPress for internal department updates, team updates etc. WordPress P2: https://wordpress.org/themes/p2/ https://wordpress.org/themes/p2/
xmorse 4y ago
If you want to start a blog quickly check out Notaku [0], it can create a blog website using Notion to manage content [0] https://notaku.so/product/blog https://notaku.so/product/blog
Communitivity 4y ago
Ok, this is a novel approach. However, it doesn't give us new information, and might be an ad for Netlify (I did not find evidence for that in a cursory whois search, basing on it pushing Netlify twice).
akatechis 4y ago
Just another person mad at Elon lol
- wheelerof4te 4y ago
  Yeah, likely just another liberal shill who lost his dream job, eating burgers at Twitter social meeting rooms. These hi-tech firms aren't much different than state-owned companies where a bunch of "workforce" consists of rulling-party members sitting all day every day, doing nothing.
  - Finnucane 4y ago
    Now you can have a cot in your office and no toilet paper in the bathroom. Much better.
- Zvez 4y ago
  If the only thing you red was part of about Musk, you missed the point. Nobody cares about Musk in particular, he is just a good example of what can happen with a place you put your content on.
bena 4y ago
I tell myself this every day. And every day, I don't. Either I feel I didn't do enough to talk about it. Or what I'm doing isn't worth talking about. Or what I'm doing I can't talk about due to other reasons (confidentiality and things of that nature). And then, while I used to be an ok writer back in the day for my age group, it's been a very hot minute since I last wrote to be read.
nigamanth 4y ago
Starting a blog to have a voice? We all have a voice, and unless we use it wisely or have topics we wanna blog about then maybe creating a blog isn't that worth it.
bentobean 4y ago
I don't know, but I'm told that if you want to create fucking content, OnlyFans is a more suitable platform. ("Don't tell - show.")
- snapplebobapple 4y ago
  This is the correct answer given the poor title of this post.
wheelerof4te 4y ago
I find this newfound outrage over Twitter really strange. No one bat an eye when former Twitter executives silenced non-mainstream, unorthodox and "right-wing" views. Most people were banned over a single tweet. When Elon came and made the platform semi-usable, sometimes reversing the censorship game, everyone freaked out. I once thought that was funny, at least. Now, I think it's infuriating and really dumb. There should be no double standards. You either allow free speech or you don't.
- holler 4y ago
  > like Elon Fucking Musk, can take that away from you I was thinking the same thing, was this person in such an outrage when Jack Dorsey was at the helm?
  - trynewideas 4y ago
    If it helps as context, the author launched fosstodon.org in 2018.
  - kevq 4y ago
    (writer of the site here) I've never liked Twitter, or any mainstream social media for that matter. The only one that came close for me was Google+, that was brilliant, I thought. So yeah, nothing to do with the shit show that is Elon Musk, it's just good timing. :-)
    - holler 4y ago
      Haha ok that makes sense, thanks for clarifying! May I ask, what was it about Google+ that you enjoyed?
e61133e3 4y ago
I love personal blogs.. if you have one, please share it!
- urbanorchardist 4y ago
  Well, I have one. I am guessing I won't be able to post the link as I have a new account - but you can pull it up by adding .com to my username or by viewing my profile. I envisioned creating a few articles a month, but look at the pathetic state of it! I actually have a number of articles queued up, but it's a matter of finding time to select pictures, size them, and finally publish it. I am using the 11ty blog engine and hosting on GitHub. I like the setup quite a bit, I just need to set aside a day to my content published.
  - abrn 4y ago
    Do you think having your blog so narrowly focused makes coming up with submissions more or less easy? This is an honest question. My initial thought is by being wide open you can write about anything that interests you, but that could also backfire and lead to constant reconsideration.
recroad 4y ago
I moved to Substack so that I'm part of a community as well, which I don't always get with a blog (along with the newsletter feature). How do you replicate that (the newsletter bit) as part of a standalone blog easily? To me, starting a blog is no problem, connecting it with a larger audience is what's missing.
- disruptthelaw 4y ago
  Publish posts on your blog, share links to those posts on social media.
bernardv 4y ago
Start with a less offensive domain name if you want someone to read your precious thoughts.
readingnews 4y ago
OK, so I broke my own blog many years ago, wordpress, hated it. I like this blog style. I was using bashblog, but I want to give this a shot. I am apparently a moron. I cloned the git repo. https://github.com/kevquirk/startablog https://github.com/kevquirk/startablog It is all markdown. OK, I get a markdown converter for my linux server, but wait... the actual posts are in _posts/YYYY, so there must be some kind of script that goes through this thing and generates html... I am at a loss for what that is or where it is located?
- bluehatbrit 4y ago
  The gemfile has some jekyll plugins, some I'm guessing they've setup their netlify application to somehow handle Jekyll automatically. Not an expert with Netlify I'm guessing something in the _config.yml file is telling it to use Jekyll.
- Kalium 4y ago
  Glancing at the Gemfile, it's a Jekyll system. That's a Ruby package that does all the markdown to markup conversion. This seems like relevant documentation: https://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/04/02/a-step-by-step-guide-jekyll-4.0-on-netlify/ https://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/04/02/a-step-by-step-guide...
  - readingnews 4y ago
    Ah thanks. You know, it seems easier to just write the thing for something so simple... otherwise we have to now keep track of ruby and gems and such. I mean, it is one more thing for a simple blog, right?
    - rambambram 4y ago
      If you want to quickly start a blog, online, with feeds and a feedreader built-in, while also quickly creating a nice style for the thing, I can shamelessly recommend taking a look at https://www.heyhomepage.com https://www.heyhomepage.com
linhns 4y ago
I get what the author of this website is trying to say, but is there a need to swear that much? What is the purpose of that? Ps: You actually lost me at the "Fuck Twitter" part. It actually has been better for me since Elon took over and Mastodon has never convinced me with its hallmarks of the old Twitter.
- deleted 4y ago
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- waihtis 4y ago
  there's plenty of people out there who think saying "fuck" is demonstrating a personality
  - LouisSayers 4y ago
    Just like drinking alcohol or going to a party. I find it kind of amusing that people seem to feel that consuming something that is easily accessible makes you special in some way.
    - waihtis 4y ago
      each to their own - just highlighting the target market of this website
- mmcnl 4y ago
  Annoying indeed. Very childish.
- rektide 4y ago
  I enjoy it. I'm glad to see the unpolished, unveneered. What you see as bad, I see as a strong positive signal that we aren't taking ourselves too seriously (it would be phrased delicately if it were), that we aren't here to be nice & tactful. We're here because we're humans & we're wrestling with bullshit & we should at this point have some attitude & flippancy about where we are & how we got here & how badly we need to progress. It's time to spring ourselves from the trap, already, to start to re-emerge better genuinely human possibilities. This is a Network (1976) Mad As Hell moment. And it fits; it's apparent to many, many are mad as hell at what online social media has become, what it's impact has been on society. "You've got to get mad." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE In general, one of my signs of empathic & in touch people is that they can get past their own response & start to tune in & sympathize with, understand other people's disposition & reason, even if they don't like it. Taking the best side of your opponent in debate, the most charitable interpretation you can muster, is the fastest route to progress. I think there's a ton of ways this form here can be a good influence, but more so, I think the content is right on, and it's worth trying to get past your yuck for.
nkotov 4y ago
I pay for "unlimited" hosting which includes Wordpress blogs. I hosted a couple blogs and always at the start of the year, I have the goal to write more but doing it consistently is hard. Anyone have any tips on that?
- xwowsersx 4y ago
  As with most things, I think it helps to get to a point where you are no longer relying on sheer willpower. If every time you think about writing it turns into an an internal battle of "eh..should I write or should I not write?", well, you're just going to end up not writing a lot. With that in mind, some general tips: - Set aside dedicated time for writing on a regular basis. Maybe the same time each day or some number of days each week. - Depending on the type of writing you're doing (technical vs creative vs casual, etc), a writing routine may help. For example, you might warm up with brainstorming or free writing. Maybe even before that, you set goals for the writing session, etc. I find this helps a lot because often the writing just flows as long as you can get past the first hurdle. The basic idea is to do whatever you can to avoid just staring with a blank canvas each time you start. - Break up the writing into chunks, e.g. number of pages or even words.
- aksss 4y ago
  I found benefit from not authoring content IN the blog. Use Word, a physical notepad, whatever is convenient and persistent to draft content and jot down concepts. Then transition content to blog interface. That way you can work offline and/or at your convenience - kind of like time-shifting the writing.
hk1337 4y ago
> This is a fucking blog Looks more like a landing page trying to look like a blog. Also, I get it... > This is fucking satire
cratermoon 4y ago
One the whole, the arguments I'm reading here against the author's points and for twitter and other social are no more than rehashed versions of why the profit-oriented social media CEOs say social media is good. Audience. Engagement. View counts. Feedback. Analytics. Ask yourself, though. Who benefits most from maximizing those indicators, the content author, or the service which provides the author the free platform? Is it any coincidence that the metrics promoted and provided by the platforms are the same ones that they use to maximize their ad revenue? We know the platforms use a variety of means to influence audiences to keep coming back, why don't we examine how much the platforms use those same means to influence the creators to come back? Doesn't that little dopamine hit from having your tweet retweeted or "liked" influence the author? And if those hits are parceled out stochastically like Skinner box rewards, who is dependent on who?
kwhitefoot 4y ago
I don't get enough sex for fucking blog to be worthwhile.
bighead 4y ago
I'm not sure I am convinced of the premise that you own your content if you start your blog. How does this account for search engine crawlers indexing your data and monetizing it ?
- deleted 4y ago
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_Algernon_ 4y ago
Getting tired of this style of writing by poor writers who think swearing make them look cool. It was funny the first couple of times. Now everyone does it, and it is pretty cringe. It isn't even particularly creative or inventive swearing. Just inserting fuck every other word like it's a bastardization of pig latin.
- SinePost 4y ago
  In the author's defense, the site follows the general formula of https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/. It is, by this point, a tradition.
  - _Algernon_ 4y ago
    I know, which is why I wrote, "It was funny the first couple of times." At this point it's overused.
  - boredtofears 4y ago
    Feels a little different today than it did 2015 though. The hipster hacker aesthetic doesn't quite have the charm it used to.
- tailspin2019 4y ago
  In fairness, I find this style of writing to be far more engaging than the - far more prolific - mind-numbing, soulless corporate double-speak that you find on most websites of companies over a certain size.
- recuter 4y ago
  [flagged]
lord-bazooka 4y ago
This guy fucks.
kypro 4y ago
Surely, there are better ways to convey a strong point other than to use extreme vulgarity? I thought the first paragraph was kinda funny, but it was hard to read past that. I do agree with the sentiment though. It's been my new years resolution for about 5 years now to actually write something on my blog. I find there is an interest mix of intimacy and privacy on a blog. If I post some off the cuff thought to Facebook or Twitter it's almost out of place. There's a sort of social adequate to what you can and can't post to social media. Facebook is a place for family and friend stuff, Twitter is kinda a place for short updates and thoughts for people who care enough about you to read it. But there are no rules on my blog. And no one close to me really cares about what I'm writing on my blog so it feels more private while also being more open and personal because I feel I can write pretty much anything.
- fargle 4y ago
  i was just disappointed because i misunderstood the title. i was curious what that would look like, like a vblog but an fblog? ah, just another satirical f-bomb-blog.
josht 4y ago
I found this post to be refreshing, as the author was blatantly thumbing their nose at web2's centralized nature and having fun in the process. Choosing to be your own platform is a form of empowering ones ideas. And if reach is a concern, post a damn link.
chillage 4y ago
1. Write whatever, some accessible short techy thing 2. Insert "fuck" 3. Get a ton of votes+views
shadowgovt 4y ago
The single greatest value for starting and maintaining my own blog is searchability. Because the older I get, the more stuff I've done that I forgot I did. It's helpful to have some details of how I knocked out some past project to reference when I do something similar in the future.
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vt85 4y ago
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wendyshu 4y ago
I had a fucking blog on Tumblr but then they banned pornography.
skybrian 4y ago
You can start a blog, but if you want anyone who isn’t already a subscriber to see a new post, you need to link to to it from Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, Hacker News, etc. So having a blog doesn’t replace social media. It’s a reason to use all the social media.
zelphirkalt 4y ago
Laws in my country basically destroy(ed) the blogging scene. It is a legal risk not to put your address on the blog. People do not want every Billy on the Internet to know where they live with precise address, just because they want to participate on the web. That is one thing. The other thing is missing knowledge. Many people don't even know what a website consists of. I am not sure I want more people to have shitty blogs on medium or similar websites.
- lobocinza 4y ago
  Out of curiosity can I ask which country it is?
  - wendyshu 4y ago
    I love it when people reference "my country" and don't say the country.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Germany. I think the GP is exaggerating the legal risk.
    - zelphirkalt 4y ago
      Maybe I am, maybe I am not. You can have great fun with Abmahnanwaelten (lawyers, who are in the business of threatening people for their supposedly unlawful actions), if your blog is missing your address. The law says, that you can get fined up to 50k€ for that. Obviously it will very likely not be that much for a measly blog. You need to put your address, if you have any advertisement on your website, do anything journalistic, or, if you are organizing any kind of group on German territory. Probably some more conditions which I forgot. Want to make a post about your favorite restaurants? Oh, that could be seen as an ad! Better not post it! Want to rant a little about something silly some politician has done? Ooops! That could be seen as journalist activity! Want to post a datetime and location of the next meeting of your favorite hobby group? Organizing people on German territory! You can see it is very easy to make a mistake. Not likely, that anyone will even find your blog or care, but also not nice to run the risk. On the other hand I don't want everyone on the Internet to know where I live, so I cannot put an "Impressum" there either. I have read up on things like: "Can I put a post box there?" and similar ideas, but there have been cases in which courts decided, that this is not sufficient any longer.
irrational 4y ago
A fucking blog? So, like an onlyfans blog? In all seriousness, I don’t understand the reason to use profanity in the name like that. Everyone knows that a large percentage of the population is turned off by profanity. Why limit your potential audience right out of the gate?
- rektide 4y ago
  I find the tone policing to be pretty low-caliber. This is hilarious. The page isn't long, and at the end you'll find why they did this: > This is fucking satire. This site was heavily influenced by the geniuses behind Motherfucking Website and Better Motherfucking Website. Although this site has been created as a bit of fun, the message behind it is a serious one There are dozens and dozens of blog posts telling folks they should create a blog. Plenty of options. This one has character & flavor. It doesn't detract from the others who take it more seriously. I for one think it's sad to brring such a dampened, limited, negative perspective to bear over something many people find pretty funny & silly. It's fucking epic. It's a good option, amid many other's also advocating for starting a blog.
sourcecodeplz 4y ago
The easiest way to start a blog with a custom domain is through Blogger from Google. The other option is to go to Google Domains directly. After you register a domain you have options to deploy it to Blogger, Google Sites and others. You only pay for the domain name. The hosting and traffic are free. Blogger has been online since 1999 btw. It isn't going anywhere and I say this with confidence. My confidence comes from me personally looking for Blogger blogs and finding old ones (from 1999) that are still updated today. Google would not dare take those peoples medium, it would be an outrage. Some of them get tens of comments on each post. There are also some huge Blogger blogs, for example like this one: https://www.surrenderat20.net/ https://www.surrenderat20.net/ that has thousands of comments on each post. Imagine how much traffic that blog pulls. It is true Google has over the years stripped Blogger of some functionalities but it is still the most flexible Blogging platform. Why? Because you can add custom HTML, Javascript and CSS to each and every individual post/page or site-wide, category-wide etc (try doing that for free on wordpress dot com). They also allow adult content if you can believe it. Their content policy is quite lax.

370 points by xyzal 4y ago

sam345 4y ago

The f*ing use of f*k in domains, headlines, etc io get f*ing noticed is f**ing getting old

rideontime 4y ago
Yeah, this is very 2007 behavior.

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ymolodtsov 4y ago

The key problem here is that most of my friends will never have a blog. The barrier to create one is just too much, and I'm not only talking about the technical ones. It's a much lesser commitment to post a photo on Instagram with a few lines. And actually see your friends seeing it, so you don't feel like you're wasting time.

leoplct 4y ago

Forking from github, editing and deploying to netlify is not easy for a non-developer. That's why they use Substack, Ghost, Wordpress.com etc.

pmarreck 4y ago

Is there a site that will 1) let you pick an available domain name 2) set up the hosting, the blog CMS, its authentication, and all the routing for you 3) show you the cost, and just let you pay it? Because as much as I can do all this stuff manually, that would be pretty sweet to automate, for the folks who just want to "start a fucking blog" and not have to become sysadmins

luplex 4y ago
There are lots. Wordpress.com comes to mind
- wongarsu 4y ago
  And as the middle ground, most reputable web hosters (the kind where you buy a domain with 50GB space on shared hosting that runs mostly PHP) have a one-click Wordpress setup. That way you have a base install up and running in five minutes, but can customize as much as you want if you ever want to. Doesn't come with preconfigured caching though, so maybe spend five minutes setting that up.
icepat 4y ago
I'm pretty sure that a a lot of existing hosting services let you do that. Even hosted Wordpress lets you do that.
iLoveOncall 4y ago
Yeah like almost any web hosting company will provide you with that, they all have a set of services you can setup on your hosting in one click.
Mikeb85 4y ago
Yes. Tons of sites like Hostinger and similar that handle basically everything start to finish to set up a blog.
mdrzn 4y ago
OVH or any other "Web hosting" provider usually will let you pick a domain, choose a CMS to install (which is why Wordpress is everywhere) and be online in 5 minutes to post in your blog. If you go the Netlify route, YMMV.
- spirit557 4y ago
  just make sure YOU own the domain
4y ago

ohelabs 4y ago

Check out https://ghost.org/pricing/ https://ghost.org/pricing/ it’s exactly what you are asking for.

ohadron 4y ago
That is extremely expensive if all you need is a place to host your thoughts available to a wide audience. ($15/mo basic tier, and if I drag the slider to 20k 'members' the 'creator' tier is at $149/mo billed annually).
- m3nu 4y ago
  Ghost is run by a foundation with a hard limit on revenue. They don't need more users at this point.
  - ohadron 4y ago
    Fair enough. But that probably means that they are currently not a good fit for someone looking to move their Twitter presence to a blog.
    - m3nu 4y ago
      They are still pushing FOSS adoption and publish bugfixes regularly. The aim just isn't to have many cheap hosting users directly. Not speaking for the project here. Just what I understood from conversations with devs.
    - m3nu 4y ago
      Personally, I think the combination of blog, newsletter and optional monetization is a good fit for many.
- dspillett 4y ago
  Ghost is self-hostable, and you should be able to get a VPS matching the system requirements for $5/mo unless you get properly popular so need more hosting umph. Though Ghost would be overkill for a really simple blog, despite its staring point as intending to be just enough tech to host content well (a reaction to what WordPress has/had become).

m3nu 4y ago

At PikaPods we have Ghost and WordPress to run with a few clicks. Comes with a subdomain, but can also add your own domain: https://www.pikapods.com/apps#blog https://www.pikapods.com/apps#blog

hcks 4y ago

I’m not sure to understand the point of setting up your own website in 2023. I mean it’s a fun endeavour by itself but if the point is really to communicate you’re 100% better of using one of the numerous blogging / microblogging option.

durnygbur 4y ago
For example Twitter? Let me give you few counter arguments in the subsequent posts... (1/14) or Reddit? oooopsie... I'm banned again.
mylons 4y ago
why are you 100% better off using a platform that can censor and kick you off?
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Because in 99.99% of cases they won't and you'll benefit from mass viewership? If you keep backups you can always go on your own in case that happens, and you also get the controversy to boost interest.
  - forgotpwd16 4y ago
    >benefit from mass viewership Assuming that's something a blog's author cares about. But even if that is, you can always share a link to social media.
    - moffkalast 4y ago
      Idk, it sound easier for followers to just automatically get notified of a new post instead of having to manually shill it every time.
  - mylons 4y ago
    you can use those platforms to market your blog. i’m literally doing this and getting thousands of views a month on a 2 month old site. that’s not filling the 99.99% — maybe just the unimaginative

gfodor 4y ago

In this spirit I recently released a project to let you deploy multiplayer 3D worlds using static HTML: webspaces.space

AstixAndBelix 4y ago

This website is terrible. Blog navbar above the blog's title? The undertitle has a full stop at the end? The first paragraph is unexplainably bigger than the rest and all the spacings are wrong and too wide. This is very strange since the author of this website actually has his own blog which is nicely designed, but for some reason he really went out of his way to make this page into a mess. Which is even stranger because you'd think he'd put all his skill into a page dedicated to reaching out and actually convincing people

o_1 4y ago
I think this is artistic rage based design
- AstixAndBelix 4y ago
  The point of motherfuckingwebsite is to show that a minimalist page can still look good and be useful. This is because the website has an agenda and wants to convince people. This page on the other hand looks and feels really terrible, so I don't get how anyone could be convinced of starting a blog from this
forgotpwd16 4y ago
>Blog navbar above the blog's title? The undertitle has a full stop at the end? The first paragraph is unexplainably bigger than the rest and all the spacings are wrong and too wide. And those are objectively bad enough to call the site terrible according to which metric?

derrida 4y ago

The person that wrote this needs some training in swearing as it's a bit repetitive, I suggest they visit Australia.

nine_k 4y ago
Swearing? I had a faint hope that the OP suggests publishing a diary of sex adventures. Alas.
- freetanga 4y ago
  Given the average crowd, it would be a one-handed version of things….
dspillett 4y ago
I assume they were aping motherfuckingwebsite.com and its descendents, so it may not be quite their usual style.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Don't have to assume: > This site was heavily influenced by the geniuses behind Motherfucking Website and Better Motherfucking Website.
LastNevadan 4y ago
I had an Australian manager once. To live to up the stereotypes of Australia, he had two things: a map that was "upside down", with south up and therefore with Australia at the top of the globe. The second was a book of Australian slang and swear words. One of the words in the dictionary was "dickhead," who definition was this: "A person of no consequence. One's boss is invariably a dickhead." Lol.
- derrida 4y ago
  I'm Australian. Wait, is "dickhead" not common in American and Europe? It's extremely common here I just assumed it was Queens English.

hiidrew 4y ago

I found this option recently: https://www.planetable.xyz/ https://www.planetable.xyz/ If you have an ENS domain you can spin up a quick blog using that and IPFS. For example, mine is werdy.eth.limo

blamazon 4y ago

The linguistic style is an overt reference to 'motherfuckingwebsite.com': https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

canadianfella 4y ago
It says so on the page.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  > It says so on the fucking page. FTFY
- Joeboy 4y ago
  Hence "overt".
  - iiv 4y ago
    > The content is an overt attempt to convince you to start a blog. That's a bit of a useless comment, isn't it?
    - blamazon 4y ago
      Aforementioned comment maker here. My justification is that, per my understanding of the HN guidelines, it's not that interesting to discuss whether folks read the article completely or not. This is why I phrased it that way - I think it's an important nugget of information but many folks have limited time to read, or were turned off by the style, and may have not scrolled all the way to the footer to see that. I thought that comment might help more discussion of bloggery by hand waving the controversial style as an imperfect homage to something intentionally crude. To that end I also figured there was potential discussion in how OP article doesn't quite hit the same poetic cadence as motherfuckingwebsite.

Brajeshwar 4y ago

I like SimpleCSS[1] (used on this website). I have used that quite a few times to quickly launch simple websites. The creator is here on HackerNews. 1. https://simplecss.org https://simplecss.org

forgotpwd16 4y ago
Creator is the same one that made the submitted site. And thanks for link. Looks nice.
- Brajeshwar 4y ago
  Isn't it cool. I will remember that site because I forked mine out of it. ;-) https://brajeshwar.com https://brajeshwar.com
  - TurkishPoptart 4y ago
    I LOVE the darkmode toggle. Congrats!

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jacksnipe 4y ago

I don’t have a blog because it strikes me as more likely to hurt me than harm me.

breck 4y ago

Also, put down Markdown and give our Scroll a try: https://scroll.pub https://scroll.pub It now powers sites like my own blog (https://breckyunits.com/ https://breckyunits.com/), knowledge bases like PLDB.com, and our first new public domain daily newspaper called the Long Beach Pub (https://longbeach.pub/1-3-2023.html https://longbeach.pub/1-3-2023.html).

catapart 4y ago

Blogs aren't "realtime", so they don't solve any problems that people went to social media for. If you're serious about people "just starting blogs" you need a proof of concept that centralizes various blogs into an updating feed of subscribed blogs. This isn't insurmountable. It's actually pretty simple, in a technical sense. The real trick is to get blogs to play along by providing an api endpoint that will enable a feeds to be generated in the ways that people use them (latest, hashtags, interest relevancy, searchability, etc), as well as endpoints that allow users to interact with them (comments, notifications, etc). Some of that is currently done with RSS, others will need a new (preferably less verbose) form of syndication. You could even use simple iframes as the delivery mechanism for the blog content, that way the blogs still get their ad-impressions. So long as the posts showed up in a curated feed, without needing to actually click through to anything, it would be fine. The only other thing you would need is a sign-up process that is as simple as facebook or twitter. To the point where you might not even be sure you're creating a "blog", if that wasn't your explicit intention. So yeah; when that platform/protocol becomes available, I'd say blogs are the silver bullet! Until then, the idea that we should all go back to scouring the net for bookmark-able content, or dealing with the static interaction of an RSS feed, is a non-starter. We didn't make/choose social media because it was useless. We did it because it was easy. That has to be a priority in any suggested alternative.

alt227 4y ago
Doesnt this go against the sentiment of the article? It makes a heavy point about nobody being able to control or censor what you have to say. As soon as you give power to an aggregator, thats a cetral point which can control/censor the content.
- catapart 4y ago
  Nah. The point, here, is those blog endpoints. That syndicates the blog to anyone with a browser. If one aggregator decides to cut you off, then your audience can always find another aggregator. Or, if you're particularly egregious, and no aggregators will host you, they can always go directly to your blog (aggregators have done the hard work of advertising your content already), or they can build their own aggregator and tell the faithful to join them, there. It's "freedom of speech without freedom of reach". Or whatever buzz phrase we're using to describe it, these days.

nixcraft 4y ago

For non-tech folks, I helped a few, and they all loved WordPress. They have simple pricing and a good mobile app with decent support https://wordpress.com/pricing/ https://wordpress.com/pricing/. Of course, there are other options, too like Ghost Pro https://ghost.org/pricing/ https://ghost.org/pricing/

esskay 4y ago
Software devs dont let friends use Wordpress. (I kid of course but would never touch it myself for the obvious problems it has)
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  I use it all the time. What are these "obvious" problems?
  - esskay 4y ago
    I think this (and the overall discussion) cover it better than I ever could in a single post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30172268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30172268 However from a personal level the main two ones for me are the poor quality of its codebase and the lack of care or common sense around the official plugin repository, bordering on outright incompetence on their part for allowing unvetted and highly dangerous plugins to stay on the official repo. Honestly as a developer for going on 20 years in a professional capacity I physically recoil at the absolute awfulnes of the codebase.
    - hestefisk 4y ago
      It might be poor code, but it runs pretty much everywhere and is very popular :)
    - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
      Fair 'nuff. But it still works fine for my blogs, and I've not had any issues. I also know a lot of folks that use it for sites. What are the alternatives? Remember that most of the folks I work with are far, far from tech wizards.

bjt2n3904 4y ago

POSSE is a fun acronym. Loving the trend towards owning your platform.

mxuribe 4y ago
The POSSE term was popularized *years ago* by the Indie Web group: https://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE ....Of course, its quite nice that present-day trend is picking it up a tad. :-)

jpe90 4y ago

i just migrated my blog off my vps to sourcehut pages last night, it was easy peasy https://srht.site/quickstart https://srht.site/quickstart

revskill 4y ago

The hard part is not related to blogging as i see. It's related to CI/CD, domain, testing stuff. Because maintainance is not free.

crims0n 4y ago
Started a blog some time ago with AWS Lightsail... was like 5 USD a month and all you had to take care of (after initial setup) was security updates and cert renewal. Your point is well taken, but I think there are relatively cheap and low maintenance options out there that "normal" people who are technically inclined can handle.
dspillett 4y ago
For a simple blog the hard parts are: * having something to blog about * having/arranging time to write and (if needed) edit If you have a CI/CD pipeline of any complexity at all for a blog, then either you are sharing infrastructure with other projects¹ or you are overcomplicating things!² -- [1] perhaps your blog is largely related to dev so shares your dev/documentation resources [2] no judgement: I'm capable of overcomplicating everything!
- revskill 4y ago
  OK, think about one use case. What if you want introduce some diagramming or Latex rendering in your blog ? In this case, if your original tooling doesn't support, you need to re-invent somehow .
  - idontpost 4y ago
    [dead]
  - dspillett 4y ago
    > What if you want introduce some diagramming or Latex rendering in your blog ? Then you are starting to step beyond what I was referring to as “a simple blog” (text, formatting, maybe some pictures or SVG). Though there are options that don't require a CI/CD pipeline. Depending on what Latext you need MathJax may do the trick (just include the JS in your standard page header, and drop the Latex code straight in inline where needed as per their standard example: https://jsbin.com/?html,output https://jsbin.com/?html,output. There are similar charting options like mermaid too. I don't know of inline charting options off the top of my head but I expect several exist.

c-fe 4y ago

FYI this website is blocked at my work as SOPHOS categorises it as "Sexually Explicit"

crims0n 4y ago
Palo Alto has a quick and easy site to recategorize URL and was thinking the same would exist for SOPHOS but... nope. Support forms tell you to put in a feature request - what a joke.
falcolas 4y ago
Well, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, there is a lot of fucking all over the site.
pjc50 4y ago
And this is an advantage of using a big aggregated site like Twitter is that you're "too big to block".

terrib1e 4y ago

I appreciate the spirit of this but the word fuck is all about how you deliver it. This article comes off a bit crass. Personally, as I get older, I realize it's more fun to find substitution words like "fiddlesticks" or the even more colloquial word, "fudge". Especially when youre so upset that all you want to do is say fuck.

joemaller1 4y ago

> They can’t ban you from your own blog. They can’t silence you. Imagine believing this in 2023.

rodolphoarruda 4y ago
Yes. In Brazil, a single judge can issue an order that makes your website inaccessible to anyone within the country, plus cancel all your social media presence at once. All that in a matter of hours.
cookieswumchorr 4y ago
depends on your physical location. and even if it's a rather unfortunate one you might get away with using tor or similar
ghaff 4y ago
There are degrees of everything. At the end of the day, anything can be cut off from the network. But the standards for doing so can differ significantly.
drowsspa 4y ago
There's a good case to be made that the real service social networks offer is moderation. It seems pretty well established that most people don't want to be in a wild west online, and that's why decentralization fails.
enumjorge 4y ago
One of the most notorious examples of banning was that of Trump from Twitter. He went and built his own. I've seen news report on his "tweets" (or whatever they're called on his platform) as if they were on Twitter. Banned? Yes. Silenced? No.
vasqw 4y ago
He must not know about kiwi farms.
jmull 4y ago
Black-and-white thinking leads absolutely nowhere. Maybe in 2023 we can agree to leave it behind? I think it's pretty obvious that a self-published blog provides more freedom to publish what and how you want, and that's valuable, even if it's not absolute freedom.

naillo 4y ago

Wouldn't surprise me if netlify eventually starts taking down sites based on some content moderation rationale, so have a plan B for that. But everything else I agree with.

Damogran6 4y ago

It's not the Blog I have a problem with, it's building the audience. I suck at self promotion, and my soap-box isn't close enough to a steady stream of passers-by.

capableweb 4y ago
Adjust your goal from "Build An Audience" to "Publishing stuff I myself would want to read if it existed" and the audience will find you eventually, as long as you follow POSSE (https://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE) and have genuine posts.
- cookieswumchorr 4y ago
  any idea how good the tooling mentioned there is? its the key to successfully applying this strategy, the best way would be to have it as a part of your blogging software/platform of choice and just working. because no one wants to do the monkey work of reposting everywhere
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Not sure you need a lot of tooling unless you publish many articles per week. If you're just doing one article per month, linking them (not reposting, but sharing a link: "syndication") on 5-6 platforms would take you a couple of minutes at most.
  - aksss 4y ago
    Automated cross-posting is pretty well-trod territory.
maxehmookau 4y ago
Why do you need to self-promote? You don't need to build an audience. Write for you, not for anyone else.
- Damogran6 4y ago

apetresc 4y ago

Coulda had startafucking.blog for less than $10 USD!

tamaharbor 4y ago

How fucking ridiculous.

ketanmaheshwari 4y ago

Too much and unnecessary swearing.

Finnucane 4y ago
Completely fucking superfluous and gratuitous shit, indeed.

z3t4 4y ago

"Bloggers" till exist, but they are now called Influencers and have monetized their vlogging, and have expanded to the mainstream which can not read an article longer then 240 characters, and an attention span of 2 seconds, so they use images and video instead.

throw0101a 4y ago

For 'normal' people that don't want to get into running git, there is also: * https://www.blogger.com/about/ https://www.blogger.com/about/ * https://wordpress.com https://wordpress.com

f0e4c2f7 4y ago
I've heard ghost.org offers some interesting options around self hosting and owning your content.
- MikusR 4y ago
  Unfortunately Ghost is made by people that have no idea what a cdn is. And can't tell a difference between their own code and a third party theme.
- aksss 4y ago
  Ghost is an idea for the future that is presently less than a shadow of the capabilities of Wordpress. And it’s been that way for years.
l0b0 4y ago
I've used both, and they make it really complex to move away. After finally biting the bullet and migrating[1] from Wordpress to Jekyll, there was a lot of work involved in getting the Wordpress exported files even barely presentable. [1] https://gitlab.com/engmark/engmark.gitlab.io/ https://gitlab.com/engmark/engmark.gitlab.io/
WesSouza 4y ago
For development and technology oriented content: * https://dev.to/ https://dev.to/
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  Worth noting that dev.to (and hashnode.com that someone else mentioned) has such a bad reputation for low-effort low-quality posts that's shadowbanned on HN. And nothing of value was lost meme is very applicable.

WesSouza 4y ago

No, too much work for no audience.

makach 4y ago

Nah I'd rather keep posting these fucking answers and get fucking downvotes instead

29athrowaway 4y ago

Social networks was what succeeded instant messaging and blogs/personal websites. Now people are reverting back to blogs and instant messaging. Why? because social networks were a mistake.

footlose_3815 4y ago

I love this. I always thought the biggest strength of the internet in the late 2000s was the tiny blogs that brought the world to you. Their feelings on their other page sum my feelings completely: https://thewebisfucked.com/ https://thewebisfucked.com/ Nowadays, podcasts and social media sites try to do that, but it's impromptu and attention-thirsty wannabes, bad actors, promotional bullshit, nation state actors crowding the space. If you got good words, people will read. I think I will start my blog

Tepix 4y ago

Man i like that this blog has no fucking javascript whatsoever.

e61133e3 4y ago
and no trackers.. no Facebook like buttons.. no tweet counters.. none of that shit.

WesSouza 4y ago

> Why the fuck are you still using Twitter? The author clearly doesn't understand the concept of audience. I have thousands of followers on Twitter, just hundreds on Mastodon. We can't move, we can only transition and hope others follow. Also, don't expect a lot of people to read your blog, unless you have a very hot take, like this post lol

SamBorick 4y ago
which would you rather have, thousands of people who maybe see your tweets, or a few people who actually engage with what you care about? numbers vs community.
- djbebs 4y ago
  Why do you believe there is more engagement in mastodon than in a platform designed to maximize engagement?
  - SamBorick 4y ago
    I don't believe it, its true. I was on twitter for 7 years. Hundreds of followers, thousands of tweets. Maybe 6 actual replies in that time. I've been on mastodon for 5 years now. I have people I'd genuinely call friends. A community. Regular meaningful engagement with actual humans about the stuff we make and share with each other. Twitter isn't designed for engagement between people. its designed to make money by getting you to engage with twitter as a platform.
  - kevq 4y ago
    I think you misspelled “profit” there. Engagement isn't the driver for the algorithm, profit is. It’s all about showing “fresh” content on every refresh so they have your eyes longer, and therefore more ad revenue. Masto is chronological, so there’s WAY more chance of natural discovery of content. It’s not buried by the algorithm because it doesn’t align with the hot take of the day, or isn't “trending”. I’ve personally found Mastodon to be far more engaging than Twitter, but that’s probably not going to be the se for everyone.

gk1 4y ago

Stating a blog is easy. Posting regularly is fucking hard.

kabanossen 4y ago
On the other hand, you don't have to post regularly.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Sure, if you don't care about making money.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

azangru 4y ago

So here's my question about static-site generators, such as the one that the linked site recommends. They seem fine for lengthy prose. You probably aren't going to write that many long-form blogs anyway — in the vicinity of several hundreds, maybe. After many years. So that's fine. But what I've discovered about my writing habits is that I mostly tend to write short notes, about the size of a Hacker News comment. And those can easily number in thousands after several years of writing. So how well is a static site generator suited for this? Do I want to build thousands of pages every time I start the site locally? I probably don't. But I can't find a reasonable static-site generator that will only build the requested pages locally, and build everything when deployed. It's probably also silly to pre-generate a static html page for every such short posted note. What's the most appropriate solution for such a writing pattern? Bite the bullet and set up a Wordpress or a Mastodon instance? That's a bit depressing.

turmeric_root 4y ago
I have a single HTML file with notes like this on my site. it's not the prettiest but literally no one else is going to read it anyways.
underdeserver 4y ago
Not sure it's that bad. Small, static text with minimal includes might be 300 bytes of overhead. What's the harm in having a few thousand of these?
Brajeshwar 4y ago
You don't need to run and build the site every time. Jekyll crawls to a halt on my website if I build it locally when I write. So, I just write in Obsidian, iAWriter, or Sublime Text. The articles are sometimes un-finished, to-be-edited. I push them and Github does the magic. Now, replace Jekyll with any SSG and let a tool handle the build (Netlify, Vercel, CloudFlare Pages). For your specific tweet/comment like post, I remember deploying quite a few instances of something called "P2" from WordPress for internal department updates, team updates etc. WordPress P2: https://wordpress.org/themes/p2/ https://wordpress.org/themes/p2/

xmorse 4y ago

If you want to start a blog quickly check out Notaku [0], it can create a blog website using Notion to manage content [0] https://notaku.so/product/blog https://notaku.so/product/blog

Communitivity 4y ago

Ok, this is a novel approach. However, it doesn't give us new information, and might be an ad for Netlify (I did not find evidence for that in a cursory whois search, basing on it pushing Netlify twice).

akatechis 4y ago

Just another person mad at Elon lol

wheelerof4te 4y ago
Yeah, likely just another liberal shill who lost his dream job, eating burgers at Twitter social meeting rooms. These hi-tech firms aren't much different than state-owned companies where a bunch of "workforce" consists of rulling-party members sitting all day every day, doing nothing.
- Finnucane 4y ago
  Now you can have a cot in your office and no toilet paper in the bathroom. Much better.
Zvez 4y ago
If the only thing you red was part of about Musk, you missed the point. Nobody cares about Musk in particular, he is just a good example of what can happen with a place you put your content on.

bena 4y ago

I tell myself this every day. And every day, I don't. Either I feel I didn't do enough to talk about it. Or what I'm doing isn't worth talking about. Or what I'm doing I can't talk about due to other reasons (confidentiality and things of that nature). And then, while I used to be an ok writer back in the day for my age group, it's been a very hot minute since I last wrote to be read.

nigamanth 4y ago

Starting a blog to have a voice? We all have a voice, and unless we use it wisely or have topics we wanna blog about then maybe creating a blog isn't that worth it.

bentobean 4y ago

I don't know, but I'm told that if you want to create fucking content, OnlyFans is a more suitable platform. ("Don't tell - show.")

snapplebobapple 4y ago
This is the correct answer given the poor title of this post.

wheelerof4te 4y ago

I find this newfound outrage over Twitter really strange. No one bat an eye when former Twitter executives silenced non-mainstream, unorthodox and "right-wing" views. Most people were banned over a single tweet. When Elon came and made the platform semi-usable, sometimes reversing the censorship game, everyone freaked out. I once thought that was funny, at least. Now, I think it's infuriating and really dumb. There should be no double standards. You either allow free speech or you don't.

holler 4y ago
> like Elon Fucking Musk, can take that away from you I was thinking the same thing, was this person in such an outrage when Jack Dorsey was at the helm?
- trynewideas 4y ago
  If it helps as context, the author launched fosstodon.org in 2018.
- kevq 4y ago
  (writer of the site here) I've never liked Twitter, or any mainstream social media for that matter. The only one that came close for me was Google+, that was brilliant, I thought. So yeah, nothing to do with the shit show that is Elon Musk, it's just good timing. :-)
  - holler 4y ago
    Haha ok that makes sense, thanks for clarifying! May I ask, what was it about Google+ that you enjoyed?

e61133e3 4y ago

I love personal blogs.. if you have one, please share it!

urbanorchardist 4y ago
Well, I have one. I am guessing I won't be able to post the link as I have a new account - but you can pull it up by adding .com to my username or by viewing my profile. I envisioned creating a few articles a month, but look at the pathetic state of it! I actually have a number of articles queued up, but it's a matter of finding time to select pictures, size them, and finally publish it. I am using the 11ty blog engine and hosting on GitHub. I like the setup quite a bit, I just need to set aside a day to my content published.
- abrn 4y ago
  Do you think having your blog so narrowly focused makes coming up with submissions more or less easy? This is an honest question. My initial thought is by being wide open you can write about anything that interests you, but that could also backfire and lead to constant reconsideration.

recroad 4y ago

I moved to Substack so that I'm part of a community as well, which I don't always get with a blog (along with the newsletter feature). How do you replicate that (the newsletter bit) as part of a standalone blog easily? To me, starting a blog is no problem, connecting it with a larger audience is what's missing.

disruptthelaw 4y ago
Publish posts on your blog, share links to those posts on social media.

bernardv 4y ago

Start with a less offensive domain name if you want someone to read your precious thoughts.

readingnews 4y ago

OK, so I broke my own blog many years ago, wordpress, hated it. I like this blog style. I was using bashblog, but I want to give this a shot. I am apparently a moron. I cloned the git repo. https://github.com/kevquirk/startablog https://github.com/kevquirk/startablog It is all markdown. OK, I get a markdown converter for my linux server, but wait... the actual posts are in _posts/YYYY, so there must be some kind of script that goes through this thing and generates html... I am at a loss for what that is or where it is located?

bluehatbrit 4y ago
The gemfile has some jekyll plugins, some I'm guessing they've setup their netlify application to somehow handle Jekyll automatically. Not an expert with Netlify I'm guessing something in the _config.yml file is telling it to use Jekyll.
Kalium 4y ago
Glancing at the Gemfile, it's a Jekyll system. That's a Ruby package that does all the markdown to markup conversion. This seems like relevant documentation: https://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/04/02/a-step-by-step-guide-jekyll-4.0-on-netlify/ https://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/04/02/a-step-by-step-guide...
- readingnews 4y ago
  Ah thanks. You know, it seems easier to just write the thing for something so simple... otherwise we have to now keep track of ruby and gems and such. I mean, it is one more thing for a simple blog, right?
  - rambambram 4y ago
    If you want to quickly start a blog, online, with feeds and a feedreader built-in, while also quickly creating a nice style for the thing, I can shamelessly recommend taking a look at https://www.heyhomepage.com https://www.heyhomepage.com

linhns 4y ago

I get what the author of this website is trying to say, but is there a need to swear that much? What is the purpose of that? Ps: You actually lost me at the "Fuck Twitter" part. It actually has been better for me since Elon took over and Mastodon has never convinced me with its hallmarks of the old Twitter.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
waihtis 4y ago
there's plenty of people out there who think saying "fuck" is demonstrating a personality
- LouisSayers 4y ago
  Just like drinking alcohol or going to a party. I find it kind of amusing that people seem to feel that consuming something that is easily accessible makes you special in some way.
  - waihtis 4y ago
    each to their own - just highlighting the target market of this website
mmcnl 4y ago
Annoying indeed. Very childish.
rektide 4y ago
I enjoy it. I'm glad to see the unpolished, unveneered. What you see as bad, I see as a strong positive signal that we aren't taking ourselves too seriously (it would be phrased delicately if it were), that we aren't here to be nice & tactful. We're here because we're humans & we're wrestling with bullshit & we should at this point have some attitude & flippancy about where we are & how we got here & how badly we need to progress. It's time to spring ourselves from the trap, already, to start to re-emerge better genuinely human possibilities. This is a Network (1976) Mad As Hell moment. And it fits; it's apparent to many, many are mad as hell at what online social media has become, what it's impact has been on society. "You've got to get mad." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE In general, one of my signs of empathic & in touch people is that they can get past their own response & start to tune in & sympathize with, understand other people's disposition & reason, even if they don't like it. Taking the best side of your opponent in debate, the most charitable interpretation you can muster, is the fastest route to progress. I think there's a ton of ways this form here can be a good influence, but more so, I think the content is right on, and it's worth trying to get past your yuck for.

nkotov 4y ago

I pay for "unlimited" hosting which includes Wordpress blogs. I hosted a couple blogs and always at the start of the year, I have the goal to write more but doing it consistently is hard. Anyone have any tips on that?

xwowsersx 4y ago
As with most things, I think it helps to get to a point where you are no longer relying on sheer willpower. If every time you think about writing it turns into an an internal battle of "eh..should I write or should I not write?", well, you're just going to end up not writing a lot. With that in mind, some general tips: - Set aside dedicated time for writing on a regular basis. Maybe the same time each day or some number of days each week. - Depending on the type of writing you're doing (technical vs creative vs casual, etc), a writing routine may help. For example, you might warm up with brainstorming or free writing. Maybe even before that, you set goals for the writing session, etc. I find this helps a lot because often the writing just flows as long as you can get past the first hurdle. The basic idea is to do whatever you can to avoid just staring with a blank canvas each time you start. - Break up the writing into chunks, e.g. number of pages or even words.
aksss 4y ago
I found benefit from not authoring content IN the blog. Use Word, a physical notepad, whatever is convenient and persistent to draft content and jot down concepts. Then transition content to blog interface. That way you can work offline and/or at your convenience - kind of like time-shifting the writing.

hk1337 4y ago

> This is a fucking blog Looks more like a landing page trying to look like a blog. Also, I get it... > This is fucking satire

cratermoon 4y ago

One the whole, the arguments I'm reading here against the author's points and for twitter and other social are no more than rehashed versions of why the profit-oriented social media CEOs say social media is good. Audience. Engagement. View counts. Feedback. Analytics. Ask yourself, though. Who benefits most from maximizing those indicators, the content author, or the service which provides the author the free platform? Is it any coincidence that the metrics promoted and provided by the platforms are the same ones that they use to maximize their ad revenue? We know the platforms use a variety of means to influence audiences to keep coming back, why don't we examine how much the platforms use those same means to influence the creators to come back? Doesn't that little dopamine hit from having your tweet retweeted or "liked" influence the author? And if those hits are parceled out stochastically like Skinner box rewards, who is dependent on who?

kwhitefoot 4y ago

I don't get enough sex for fucking blog to be worthwhile.

bighead 4y ago

I'm not sure I am convinced of the premise that you own your content if you start your blog. How does this account for search engine crawlers indexing your data and monetizing it ?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

_Algernon_ 4y ago

Getting tired of this style of writing by poor writers who think swearing make them look cool. It was funny the first couple of times. Now everyone does it, and it is pretty cringe. It isn't even particularly creative or inventive swearing. Just inserting fuck every other word like it's a bastardization of pig latin.

SinePost 4y ago
In the author's defense, the site follows the general formula of https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/. It is, by this point, a tradition.
- _Algernon_ 4y ago
  I know, which is why I wrote, "It was funny the first couple of times." At this point it's overused.
- boredtofears 4y ago
  Feels a little different today than it did 2015 though. The hipster hacker aesthetic doesn't quite have the charm it used to.
tailspin2019 4y ago
In fairness, I find this style of writing to be far more engaging than the - far more prolific - mind-numbing, soulless corporate double-speak that you find on most websites of companies over a certain size.
recuter 4y ago
[flagged]

lord-bazooka 4y ago

This guy fucks.

kypro 4y ago

Surely, there are better ways to convey a strong point other than to use extreme vulgarity? I thought the first paragraph was kinda funny, but it was hard to read past that. I do agree with the sentiment though. It's been my new years resolution for about 5 years now to actually write something on my blog. I find there is an interest mix of intimacy and privacy on a blog. If I post some off the cuff thought to Facebook or Twitter it's almost out of place. There's a sort of social adequate to what you can and can't post to social media. Facebook is a place for family and friend stuff, Twitter is kinda a place for short updates and thoughts for people who care enough about you to read it. But there are no rules on my blog. And no one close to me really cares about what I'm writing on my blog so it feels more private while also being more open and personal because I feel I can write pretty much anything.

fargle 4y ago
i was just disappointed because i misunderstood the title. i was curious what that would look like, like a vblog but an fblog? ah, just another satirical f-bomb-blog.

josht 4y ago

I found this post to be refreshing, as the author was blatantly thumbing their nose at web2's centralized nature and having fun in the process. Choosing to be your own platform is a form of empowering ones ideas. And if reach is a concern, post a damn link.

chillage 4y ago

1. Write whatever, some accessible short techy thing 2. Insert "fuck" 3. Get a ton of votes+views

shadowgovt 4y ago

The single greatest value for starting and maintaining my own blog is searchability. Because the older I get, the more stuff I've done that I forgot I did. It's helpful to have some details of how I knocked out some past project to reference when I do something similar in the future.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

vt85 4y ago

[dead]

wendyshu 4y ago

I had a fucking blog on Tumblr but then they banned pornography.

skybrian 4y ago

You can start a blog, but if you want anyone who isn’t already a subscriber to see a new post, you need to link to to it from Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, Hacker News, etc. So having a blog doesn’t replace social media. It’s a reason to use all the social media.

zelphirkalt 4y ago

Laws in my country basically destroy(ed) the blogging scene. It is a legal risk not to put your address on the blog. People do not want every Billy on the Internet to know where they live with precise address, just because they want to participate on the web. That is one thing. The other thing is missing knowledge. Many people don't even know what a website consists of. I am not sure I want more people to have shitty blogs on medium or similar websites.

lobocinza 4y ago
Out of curiosity can I ask which country it is?
- wendyshu 4y ago
  I love it when people reference "my country" and don't say the country.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Germany. I think the GP is exaggerating the legal risk.
  - zelphirkalt 4y ago
    Maybe I am, maybe I am not. You can have great fun with Abmahnanwaelten (lawyers, who are in the business of threatening people for their supposedly unlawful actions), if your blog is missing your address. The law says, that you can get fined up to 50k€ for that. Obviously it will very likely not be that much for a measly blog. You need to put your address, if you have any advertisement on your website, do anything journalistic, or, if you are organizing any kind of group on German territory. Probably some more conditions which I forgot. Want to make a post about your favorite restaurants? Oh, that could be seen as an ad! Better not post it! Want to rant a little about something silly some politician has done? Ooops! That could be seen as journalist activity! Want to post a datetime and location of the next meeting of your favorite hobby group? Organizing people on German territory! You can see it is very easy to make a mistake. Not likely, that anyone will even find your blog or care, but also not nice to run the risk. On the other hand I don't want everyone on the Internet to know where I live, so I cannot put an "Impressum" there either. I have read up on things like: "Can I put a post box there?" and similar ideas, but there have been cases in which courts decided, that this is not sufficient any longer.

irrational 4y ago

A fucking blog? So, like an onlyfans blog? In all seriousness, I don’t understand the reason to use profanity in the name like that. Everyone knows that a large percentage of the population is turned off by profanity. Why limit your potential audience right out of the gate?

rektide 4y ago
I find the tone policing to be pretty low-caliber. This is hilarious. The page isn't long, and at the end you'll find why they did this: > This is fucking satire. This site was heavily influenced by the geniuses behind Motherfucking Website and Better Motherfucking Website. Although this site has been created as a bit of fun, the message behind it is a serious one There are dozens and dozens of blog posts telling folks they should create a blog. Plenty of options. This one has character & flavor. It doesn't detract from the others who take it more seriously. I for one think it's sad to brring such a dampened, limited, negative perspective to bear over something many people find pretty funny & silly. It's fucking epic. It's a good option, amid many other's also advocating for starting a blog.

sourcecodeplz 4y ago

The easiest way to start a blog with a custom domain is through Blogger from Google. The other option is to go to Google Domains directly. After you register a domain you have options to deploy it to Blogger, Google Sites and others. You only pay for the domain name. The hosting and traffic are free. Blogger has been online since 1999 btw. It isn't going anywhere and I say this with confidence. My confidence comes from me personally looking for Blogger blogs and finding old ones (from 1999) that are still updated today. Google would not dare take those peoples medium, it would be an outrage. Some of them get tens of comments on each post. There are also some huge Blogger blogs, for example like this one: https://www.surrenderat20.net/ https://www.surrenderat20.net/ that has thousands of comments on each post. Imagine how much traffic that blog pulls. It is true Google has over the years stripped Blogger of some functionalities but it is still the most flexible Blogging platform. Why? Because you can add custom HTML, Javascript and CSS to each and every individual post/page or site-wide, category-wide etc (try doing that for free on wordpress dot com). They also allow adult content if you can believe it. Their content policy is quite lax.