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Let’s all go back to Tumblr

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Re: Let’s all go back to Tumblr

#51

Post by dangoor »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #50

I'm still shocked nobody has figured out how to turnkey self hosting. I mean I understand how complicated it is, given the range of options, but it seems like it's tractable. Maybe if AWS/Azure etc... had some kind of sign up API that would make it possible.

My DreamHost shared hosting WordPress is pretty turnkey. It's not the most user-friendly UI, but it really is as simple as "register domain" on one page, "install WordPress" on another, and then setup my admin account. After that, they keep the software up to date and email me to let me know when I need to click the link to upgrade the database (very infrequent).

I'd imagine there are hosts that are more turnkey than that (wordpress.com, likely).

I wonder if it's really the case that people just don't want to pay.

Re: Let’s all go back to Tumblr

#52

Post by AndrewKemendo »

dangoor wrote: post #51
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #50

I'm still shocked nobody has figured out how to turnkey self hosting. I mean I understand how complicated it is, given the range of options, but it seems like it's tractable. Maybe if AWS/Azure etc... had some kind of sign up API that would make it possible.

My DreamHost shared hosting WordPress is pretty turnkey. It's not the most user-friendly UI, but it really is as simple as "register domain" on one page, "install WordPress" on another, and then setup my admin account. After that, they keep the software up to date and email me to let me know when I need to click the link to upgrade the database (very infrequent). I'd imagine there are hosts that are more turnkey than…

It's true, there aren't any that I've seen that are more turnkey, but that's not self hosting.

I'm thinking something like Medium, where you enter your name/contact info etc... on one page and a CC and that's it.

A back end process registers the URL/whois, sets up a cloud host account, pushes a default package to the host (maybe even WP), then sends your email the key/login for the front end and the cloud host login.

So it's a one page setup for something that you can either use as a default Medium like site or SSH into and do whatever you want. You pay the monthly EC2 account, a yearly maintenance with a DNS Registry etc... like you would had you set everything up individually.

The only thing you can't currently automate is setting up people's accounts on cloud providers. I don't see that changing but would be interesting if you could.

Re: Let’s all go back to Tumblr

#53

Post by dangoor »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #52
dangoor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My DreamHost shared hosting WordPress is pretty turnkey. It's not the most user-friendly UI, but it really is as simple as "register domain" on one page, "install WordPress" on another, and then setup my admin account. After that, they keep the software up to date and email me to let me know when I need to click the link to upgrade the database (very infrequent). I'd imagine there are hosts that are more turnkey than…

It's true, there aren't any that I've seen that are more turnkey, but that's not self hosting. I'm thinking something like Medium, where you enter your name/contact info etc... on one page and a CC and that's it. A back end process registers the URL/whois, sets up a cloud host account, pushes a default package to the host (maybe even WP), then sends your email the key/login for the front end and the cloud host login.…

Dreamhost is pretty close to self-hosting. I can SSH in. I can download all of the files in my Wordpress installation, copy them elsewhere, dump my MySQL db, copy that elsewhere and have it running on another machine. The only way it differs from a VM is that I don't have root.

Dreamhost actually does, iirc, allow me to get the same experience with a VM.

Really, I'd argue that anyone offering Wordpress in such a way that you can easily download all of your data and put it somewhere else is fine on the self hosting axis.

And lots of people do pay for hosting, but there are millions more who won't pay even $1/month.

Re: Let’s all go back to Tumblr

#54

Post by cjslep »

geofft wrote: post #10
tomjen3 wrote: post #3

A radical idea, lets all go back to blogs, hosted and owned by ourselves, on our own sites, which will enrich only us, and where you can write as long and as short as you want, and link to whatever you want.

Is there a good way to get my blog onto the fediverse? It sort of seems like the protocol (ActivityPub) is built in a way that it can support blog-style content as well as toot-style content, and it would solve many of the problems people have with discoverability, RSS dying, shared private posts, etc. I'd be interested in getting my blog (which is self-hosted and using a static site generator) publishing in a way th…

Static sites will have trouble, about the only thing I think they can support are ActivitySteam representations of their HTML content.

The ActivityPub part requires dynamic processing of messages from peers, as well as sending or forwarding messages.

Re: Let’s all go back to Tumblr

#55

Post by habi »

geofft wrote: post #10
tomjen3 wrote: post #3

A radical idea, lets all go back to blogs, hosted and owned by ourselves, on our own sites, which will enrich only us, and where you can write as long and as short as you want, and link to whatever you want.

Is there a good way to get my blog onto the fediverse? It sort of seems like the protocol (ActivityPub) is built in a way that it can support blog-style content as well as toot-style content, and it would solve many of the problems people have with discoverability, RSS dying, shared private posts, etc. I'd be interested in getting my blog (which is self-hosted and using a static site generator) publishing in a way th…

If you're running a WordPress blog, then the [OStatus](https://wordpress.org/plugins/ostatus-for-wordpress/) plugin connects your site to the fediverse. I don't know if there's such a thing for your static generator, though...

Re: Let’s all go back to Tumblr

#56

Post by habi »

21 wrote: post #45
CM30 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that hard to install a blog on a shared hosting plan or VPS somewhere. Just find something with CPanel and some sort of auto installer (I think it was called Fantastico or something) and Bob's your uncle. Don't even need to know how FTP works or how to code anything to do that...

And who maintains that when something inevitably goes wrong?

You yourself :) WordPress isn't that hard to administer/maintain.

Re: Let’s all go back to Tumblr

#57

Post by JoshMnem »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #9
tomjen3 wrote: post #3

A radical idea, lets all go back to blogs, hosted and owned by ourselves, on our own sites, which will enrich only us, and where you can write as long and as short as you want, and link to whatever you want.

I agree that individual blogs that emit an RSS feed to follow are a great thing. However, most bloggers don’t really have the skills to host their own blog on a dedicated server. So, even if they did avoid Tumblr, they would be relying on another such hosting service like Blogspot or Wordpress.com.

You can use a static site generator and drag-and-drop the build directory into Netlify (or deploy with Git). Hosting is free, including using a custom domain and SSL.

https://www.staticgen.com/

https://netlify.com/

Re: Let’s all go back to Tumblr

#58

Post by ChainOfFools »

geofft wrote: post #33
eridius wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the Fediverse but you could look into micro.blog, which is focused on microblogging but supports longer-form content (long-form content shows up in a micro.blog feed as the title plus a link to the full post). micro.blog is part of IndieWeb.

"The fediverse" seems to be the name people are using to refer to the maxclique of federated Mastodon and Mastodon-compatible (Pleroma, etc.) instances. Mastodon uses ActivityPub as its server-to-server protocol, although it adds some features or at least conventions that I think are not in core ActivityPub (content warnings, emoji, usernames of the form @geofft@xoxo.zone instead of https://xoxo.zone/@geofft , etc.).…

somewhat unrelated but I've never heard the portmanteau maxclique for maximal clique before, and I'm going to steal it.

Re: Let’s all go back to Tumblr

#59

Post by adventured »

bopbop wrote: post #42

This walled garden isn't working! Quick, let's get back to the last one! Seriously though, blogs and RSS - communication on the internet has been solved. It just doesn't seem to be easily monetizable, so a big commercial entity isn't pushing it. This is quite interesting though: "Everyone I knew aged out of it, lost interest in chronicling their personal lives or got jobs writing the kinds of blogs they used to write…

> So does this mean there is money out there for the kind of tumblr/blog weirdness people like to read?

Sort of, if you've got the rare personality that can turn a blog into a form of entertainment. Along with the unrelenting dedication to do it in a rote fashion week after week for years. Once the audience latches on, you're not allowed to take a long hiatus or change what you do. Dooce (dooce.com) comes to mind, her blog had very primitive beginnings prior to growing into a serious monetized traffic destination for a time. I like to call them Howard Stern personalities, people that are gifted entertainers. You may not like their brand of content or personality (I don't care for people like Stern and Glenn Beck for example), but they've got the magic sauce for some audience base.

I spent a lot of time in the early blogosphere, circa 1998-2004 or so. Something that was amazing to observe, was how many very talented personalities were unable to break through to that ultimate next level of popularity. They seemingly had everything it required (whether wit, charm, skilled story telling, et al.) and still couldn't get there. The world has a lot of brilliant people that never break through for any number of countless reasons.

Re: Let’s all go back to Tumblr

#60

Post by IGI-111 »

eahman02 wrote: post #24
Scoping_dindus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what the goal is. 300 characters incentivizes driveby remarks rather than articulate conversations. Twitter also has really bad content enforcement. Not inherent to the format, but it's worth consideration in the interest of practicality.

Who has time and energy for articulate conversations over the internet? What do we want, a social network for the few?

Usenet was fun while it lasted. But september will probably never end.
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