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I will take the bait. What are the exact steps for making a blog? From zero. This is what is always suggested by hackers for the general public, instead of bein

I will take the bait. What are the exact steps for making a blog? From zero. This is what is always suggested by hackers for the general public, instead of being dependent on proprietary platforms. Okay then, list the exact steps to be taken by a non-programmer who wants to do that? Let's assume they own a PC or a Mac, to give them a fair start.

dangus 2y ago
I’ll take your bait: pick one of dozens of hosting providers that run common blogging platforms like Wordpress and you’re not locked in to anything. You could start your blog with someone like GoDaddy and move it to NameCheap with the import/export tools Wordpress has available. I can even see from a quick search that proprietary solutions like SquareSpace will let you export a ZIP that you can then import into someone else like Wix.
- herbertl 2y ago
  Yes! Whatever blog solution you choose, buy your own domain name. I personally use Namecheap, I have heard good things about Porkbun. That way you can always control the flow of link traffic. And set up a mailing list! If you use Substack, buy a domain name. Otherwise you can use ConvertKit, Ghost, etc., and collect your reader's emails directly.
  - xnx 2y ago
    Agree completely. Do any registrars toss in a free (or very cheap) basic [micro]blog service? Domain ownership should be the main entry point to the web, everything else is interchangeable and can be sorted out later.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Okay, a quick web search tells me Bluehost.com is what I should go for. On their front page they recommend me a plan for $5 per month, for this among other things: - 50 websites: I just want to have my own website or blog - 50 GB NVMe Storage: How many blog posts is this? - 500 Concurrent Visitors: That doesn't sound like a lot, does it? - Free SSL: What is that and why do I need that for my blog? - Free CDN: What is that and why do I need that for my blog? - DDos Protection: What is that and why do I need that for my blog? Then after selecting plan and finding a domain, you have to give a ton of info and pay about $60 to get to the next steps. Which probably will be a world of pain again. GoDaddy and other web hosts are the same. Their target public are developers and sys admins, not the general public. That's why the general public uses proprietary services for putting their creative content online. That's why the general public buys iPhones and doesn't care about how many gigabytes of RAM a phone has. That's why they buy new cars and don't know or care how many horses are under the hood. On proprietary services like social media, you can start writing, posting and uploading at once, without setting up a dozen different services and routing, worrying about security and hacks, or having to pay out of pocket. Things get even worse if said blogger or content creator would like to purchase groceries and decides to start charging for his/her work. Subscription / payment plugins are a nightmare on WordPress - and expensive to boot. Anybody who wants to keep his sanity will instead go for a proprietary solution. Just like driving is for everybody and not only mechanics, the internet is for everybody and you shouldn't have to be a programmer or sys admin to be able to express yourself online. Just like you shouldn't have to know how to bore out a cylinder to be allowed on the highways.
  - antasvara 2y ago
    To extend the driving metaphor somewhat, you definitely don't need to be a mechanic if you live in an area with a lot of mechanics. You need to know how your car works, however, if you're 50 miles from the nearest garage. If your livelihood and business depend entirely on a single social media site, that's a problem long term. I'm not talking about creators where their content is a side hustle; if your content creation is your full time income and you have a single point of failure, that should feel scary. Reminds me of the stories of people that lose access to their Google account. They can't access any account they've created using that email, they had their passwords saved with it, and essentially couldn't function without access. For a more business focused angle, it's reminiscent of the Silicon Valley Bank failure. If you can't operate your business at all if one bank were to fail (or have an outage), that's kind of a problem.
  - dangus 2y ago
    Do people not buy understand how to buy and operate cars because the spec sheet has a bunch of technical info on it? The fact remains that they are one-click setup solutions. Look at products like EasyWP on Namecheap. https://www.namecheap.com/wordpress/ https://www.namecheap.com/wordpress/ https://www.godaddy.com/hosting/wordpress-hosting https://www.godaddy.com/hosting/wordpress-hosting https://www.bluehost.com/wordpress https://www.bluehost.com/wordpress I think a lot of bloggers know that they want/need SSL, DDoS protection, and a CDN. I wouldn't confuse bloggers with the lowest common denominator general public. Let's not put on our rose colored glasses and mistake the classic world wide web for something that didn't need a decent amount of knowledge to setup even in the plain HTML days. A number of WYSIWYG blogging providers in that day (Xanga, LiveJournal) were not interoperable and basically shut down and erased your dat. If you were using a website host like Geocities or something of that sort you needed to have some level of HTML coding knowledge or were using some very limited site builder tools. And I would also say that the WYSIWYG blogging tools that are still out there are far more flexible than your typical closed wall social media platform. Services like Blogger and Medium have full export functionality as a part of their platforms.
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
satvikpendem 2y ago
Ghost.org (the open source version, not the hosted one, as you mention). Optionally buy a domain name and point the blog to there via the settings. Thousands of people (and I guarantee you the vast majority are non-technical) run blogs like on WordPress or Ghost so not sure why you're thinking people would struggle.
- nickthegreek 2y ago
  Thousands of people do it, so millions of people can? You somehow distilled 100+ steps into 2 sentences like they are fundamentally understood by the masses who struggle with the idea of file system. You have fallen victim to the exact hacker mentality OP stated.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    You're right, it's millions of people who use Ghost, per their npm download statistics, not thousands. I read what OP said but I am not going to spend time copy pasting what the Ghost.org instructions say onto an HN comment when, yes, millions of people can and do already read and follow the instructions provided there. If one can't do what millions already do, follow a simple step by step process that is clearly laid out, then I'm sorry but they honestly don't deserve to have a blog.
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      They claim one hundred million installs. If you believe that one hundred million real people are self hosting Ghost and blogging away, then I don't know what to say. This is again "if you don't know how to bore out a cylinder you don't deserve to drive". This is not a simple process for normal people: https://ghost.org/docs/install/ubuntu/ https://ghost.org/docs/install/ubuntu/
      - satvikpendem 2y ago
        It can be >1% of that figure and still be at "millions of self-hosted installs." "Normal people" should not be self hosting in the first place, not sure why you got the impression that they should be. I should amend my previous comment though, I meant that for normal people, they should be able to follow the hosted Ghost instructions and if they can't do that then they don't deserve to have a blog, not that they should set up self hosting themselves, as that's not feasible for most non-technical people.
op00to 2y ago
What are the exact steps from zero for starting a newspaper? Writing a book and getting it published? Effectively using billboards for an ad campaign?
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  > What are the exact steps from zero for starting a newspaper? Assuming the user owns a computer and a printer: 1. Open Microsoft Word or Apple Pages (either of these comes pre-installed on most consumer devices). 2. Write your articles. 3. Check that the printer has paper. 4. Print. Millions of normal people are using computers and printing their documents every day, this is not a problem for them. > Writing a book and getting it published? 1. Open Pages 2. Write your book 3. File menu -> Publish on Apple Books... They even have a nice tutorial: https://authors.apple.com/support/4574-publish-book-from-web https://authors.apple.com/support/4574-publish-book-from-web > Effectively using billboards for an ad campaign? This I don't know.

dangus 2y ago

I’ll take your bait: pick one of dozens of hosting providers that run common blogging platforms like Wordpress and you’re not locked in to anything. You could start your blog with someone like GoDaddy and move it to NameCheap with the import/export tools Wordpress has available. I can even see from a quick search that proprietary solutions like SquareSpace will let you export a ZIP that you can then import into someone else like Wix.

herbertl 2y ago
Yes! Whatever blog solution you choose, buy your own domain name. I personally use Namecheap, I have heard good things about Porkbun. That way you can always control the flow of link traffic. And set up a mailing list! If you use Substack, buy a domain name. Otherwise you can use ConvertKit, Ghost, etc., and collect your reader's emails directly.
- xnx 2y ago
  Agree completely. Do any registrars toss in a free (or very cheap) basic [micro]blog service? Domain ownership should be the main entry point to the web, everything else is interchangeable and can be sorted out later.
carlosjobim 2y ago
Okay, a quick web search tells me Bluehost.com is what I should go for. On their front page they recommend me a plan for $5 per month, for this among other things: - 50 websites: I just want to have my own website or blog - 50 GB NVMe Storage: How many blog posts is this? - 500 Concurrent Visitors: That doesn't sound like a lot, does it? - Free SSL: What is that and why do I need that for my blog? - Free CDN: What is that and why do I need that for my blog? - DDos Protection: What is that and why do I need that for my blog? Then after selecting plan and finding a domain, you have to give a ton of info and pay about $60 to get to the next steps. Which probably will be a world of pain again. GoDaddy and other web hosts are the same. Their target public are developers and sys admins, not the general public. That's why the general public uses proprietary services for putting their creative content online. That's why the general public buys iPhones and doesn't care about how many gigabytes of RAM a phone has. That's why they buy new cars and don't know or care how many horses are under the hood. On proprietary services like social media, you can start writing, posting and uploading at once, without setting up a dozen different services and routing, worrying about security and hacks, or having to pay out of pocket. Things get even worse if said blogger or content creator would like to purchase groceries and decides to start charging for his/her work. Subscription / payment plugins are a nightmare on WordPress - and expensive to boot. Anybody who wants to keep his sanity will instead go for a proprietary solution. Just like driving is for everybody and not only mechanics, the internet is for everybody and you shouldn't have to be a programmer or sys admin to be able to express yourself online. Just like you shouldn't have to know how to bore out a cylinder to be allowed on the highways.
- antasvara 2y ago
  To extend the driving metaphor somewhat, you definitely don't need to be a mechanic if you live in an area with a lot of mechanics. You need to know how your car works, however, if you're 50 miles from the nearest garage. If your livelihood and business depend entirely on a single social media site, that's a problem long term. I'm not talking about creators where their content is a side hustle; if your content creation is your full time income and you have a single point of failure, that should feel scary. Reminds me of the stories of people that lose access to their Google account. They can't access any account they've created using that email, they had their passwords saved with it, and essentially couldn't function without access. For a more business focused angle, it's reminiscent of the Silicon Valley Bank failure. If you can't operate your business at all if one bank were to fail (or have an outage), that's kind of a problem.
- dangus 2y ago
  Do people not buy understand how to buy and operate cars because the spec sheet has a bunch of technical info on it? The fact remains that they are one-click setup solutions. Look at products like EasyWP on Namecheap. https://www.namecheap.com/wordpress/ https://www.namecheap.com/wordpress/ https://www.godaddy.com/hosting/wordpress-hosting https://www.godaddy.com/hosting/wordpress-hosting https://www.bluehost.com/wordpress https://www.bluehost.com/wordpress I think a lot of bloggers know that they want/need SSL, DDoS protection, and a CDN. I wouldn't confuse bloggers with the lowest common denominator general public. Let's not put on our rose colored glasses and mistake the classic world wide web for something that didn't need a decent amount of knowledge to setup even in the plain HTML days. A number of WYSIWYG blogging providers in that day (Xanga, LiveJournal) were not interoperable and basically shut down and erased your dat. If you were using a website host like Geocities or something of that sort you needed to have some level of HTML coding knowledge or were using some very limited site builder tools. And I would also say that the WYSIWYG blogging tools that are still out there are far more flexible than your typical closed wall social media platform. Services like Blogger and Medium have full export functionality as a part of their platforms.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago

satvikpendem 2y ago

Ghost.org (the open source version, not the hosted one, as you mention). Optionally buy a domain name and point the blog to there via the settings. Thousands of people (and I guarantee you the vast majority are non-technical) run blogs like on WordPress or Ghost so not sure why you're thinking people would struggle.

nickthegreek 2y ago
Thousands of people do it, so millions of people can? You somehow distilled 100+ steps into 2 sentences like they are fundamentally understood by the masses who struggle with the idea of file system. You have fallen victim to the exact hacker mentality OP stated.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  You're right, it's millions of people who use Ghost, per their npm download statistics, not thousands. I read what OP said but I am not going to spend time copy pasting what the Ghost.org instructions say onto an HN comment when, yes, millions of people can and do already read and follow the instructions provided there. If one can't do what millions already do, follow a simple step by step process that is clearly laid out, then I'm sorry but they honestly don't deserve to have a blog.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    They claim one hundred million installs. If you believe that one hundred million real people are self hosting Ghost and blogging away, then I don't know what to say. This is again "if you don't know how to bore out a cylinder you don't deserve to drive". This is not a simple process for normal people: https://ghost.org/docs/install/ubuntu/ https://ghost.org/docs/install/ubuntu/
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      It can be >1% of that figure and still be at "millions of self-hosted installs." "Normal people" should not be self hosting in the first place, not sure why you got the impression that they should be. I should amend my previous comment though, I meant that for normal people, they should be able to follow the hosted Ghost instructions and if they can't do that then they don't deserve to have a blog, not that they should set up self hosting themselves, as that's not feasible for most non-technical people.

op00to 2y ago

What are the exact steps from zero for starting a newspaper? Writing a book and getting it published? Effectively using billboards for an ad campaign?

carlosjobim 2y ago
> What are the exact steps from zero for starting a newspaper? Assuming the user owns a computer and a printer: 1. Open Microsoft Word or Apple Pages (either of these comes pre-installed on most consumer devices). 2. Write your articles. 3. Check that the printer has paper. 4. Print. Millions of normal people are using computers and printing their documents every day, this is not a problem for them. > Writing a book and getting it published? 1. Open Pages 2. Write your book 3. File menu -> Publish on Apple Books... They even have a nice tutorial: https://authors.apple.com/support/4574-publish-book-from-web https://authors.apple.com/support/4574-publish-book-from-web > Effectively using billboards for an ad campaign? This I don't know.