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Always Own Your Platform

alwaysownyourplatform.com

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Re: Always Own Your Platform

#21

Post by okaleniuk »

I already do. https://wordsandbuttons.online/ is just a static script-maintainable stand alone site. It has no 3rd-party platform but the web hosting. Moreover, I own the domain and don't really rely on anything provider-specific. I can migrate it any day and users wouldn't notice a thing.

I also use GitHub to host sources https://github.com/akalenuk/wordsandbuttons but it's just a convenience not a necessity.

The whole thing is just a set of HTML pages with embedded CSS and JS. There are no 3rd-party dependencies or even inner dependencies. No frameworks, no libraries. Each page is self-contained.

At first I thought that writing the whole thing from scratch would be cumbersome, that maybe I need some framework for plots and UI. Now I just enjoy the freedom I have. I can turn any UI idea that comes to mind into some JS code. And even if the code appears redundant because of no dependency policy, each page still comes tiny. With all the JS inside, every one my pages is still under 64KB.

This makes it not only lean and fast but reliable as well. Words And Buttons Online has 5'000-100'000 monthly visitors depending on success of every particular page; never had a problem with Reddit-effect.

In general, I am quite satisfied with this no-platform/no-dependencies decision. Yes, writing HTML manually is a bit tedious and sometimes boring, but the benefits way outweigh the cost.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#22

Post by cabaalis »

atian wrote: post #20

Not Found The requested URL / was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. Always Own Your Platform

The server is responding, though, so maybe an argument for owning your platform is being able to permanently remove your content if you so choose?

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#23

Post by ergest »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #4

This is important but it doesn't address the reasons why people don't own their own platform. Audience. Successful platforms have solved the empty room problem. Until there is a decentralized solution to that, there is nothing new to talk about.

Actually I don't think that the audience is the problem, I think it's the "tech friction" Do you really want to figure out how to host your own HD videos without a video platform? How to run your own email list without an ESP? How to use SEO/SEM to attract an audience? How to host and maintain blog software? Handle your own payments?

Any company who's serious about their business, eventually gets there, but still they're not 100% independent. AWS is one of the biggest platform providers out there and they don't provide an audience, they merely smooth out the "tech friction" of building a tech company. It's not a coincidence that investors always seek SAAS/PAAS companies with massive switching costs, it's in fact the biggest type of moat there is. http://news.morningstar.com/classroom2/course.asp?docId=1440...

I agree with the poster who said that the solution isn't to "host your own" but to be ready to move providers at a moment's notice, to build resilience in your tech stack as much as possible so if your provider shafts you, it's easy to ditch them. This is really hard to do for small content creators/businesses as they don't have enough resources to make it happen. This is what the article should actually cover.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#24

Post by afiori »

atian wrote: post #20

Not Found The requested URL / was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. Always Own Your Platform

Or maybe it is a meta statement of what can go wrong. probably no :)

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#25

Post by gargron »

It's an odd page that doesn't offer any solutions or calls to action... But "own your platform" is basically the principle of Mastodon [1], where you don't have to sacrifice the idea of "reach" because all individually hosted Mastodon servers are interoperable, so you can get followers and go viral all across the network.

[1]: https://joinmastodon.org

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#26

Post by Nux »

afiori wrote: post #24
atian wrote: post #20

Not Found The requested URL / was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. Always Own Your Platform

Or maybe it is a meta statement of what can go wrong. probably no :)

It'd better be! :-D

Lesson no 1: don't use shared web hosting.

Though looks more like Dreamhost removed a site that was hogging down a whole server thanks to HN.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#27

Post by jawns »

From the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190324154559/http://alwaysowny...

> You know, it wasn't that long ago. There was RSS. There were blogs. There were sub-groups and communities. The weirdos found each other. The non-weirdos found each other. It wasn't perfect. But it was distributed. It was ours.

> It was yours.

> Now? The original dream of the web is dying. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Medium, and YouTube entice us to give them our creative work. They control what gets amplified and what gets monetized. A few conference rooms in Silicon Valley dictate our online culture.

> It's time to take it back. Stop giving away your work to people who don't care about it. Host it yourself. Distribute it via methods you control. Build your audience deliberately and on your own terms. Be in charge of the relationship with your audience. Deliver value and then ask for money. Avoid unnecessary middlemen.

> Always. Own. Your platform.

The pages says it was created by Sean Blanda. On his personal site http://seanblanda.com/, it says he's the Director of Editorial for InVision and founder of Pilcrow House.

He's got an active Twitter account -- last post was within a day -- so I guess he's comfortable not owning his platform.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#28

Post by jsgo »

gatherhunterer wrote: post #12
throwaway13337 wrote: post #4

This is important but it doesn't address the reasons why people don't own their own platform. Audience. Successful platforms have solved the empty room problem. Until there is a decentralized solution to that, there is nothing new to talk about.

If I post an article on Medium, will the platform drive traffic to it on its own? Is my job done at that point, or will I still need to generate interest by posting it around and getting a lot of visits before Medium suggests it? When new readers enjoy the content will they come back to me or will they come back to Medium?

No, chances are you'll still want to share it on Twitter, HN, or whatever other locations you have an audience with. The benefit is that I may be reading an article about natural language processing and then after it is done, your article about NTLK pops up near the bottom with a catchy title and then I decide to go to it and read it. All this while you and I have no networking connections whatsoever, yet you gained me as a reader.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#29

Post by ecmascript »

I host my own stuff on a vps that I rent, so I am already a big believer in "owning your platform". But I don't think this is always the wisest point.

My projects are rather small, and I plan to build a real business I might take care and actually use a managed platform just to not face hurdles in the beginning.

If the service succeeds and I can finance my time I would happily own my own platform. But stuff like databases is nice to have managed sometimes if you want to be able to go on vacation without worries.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#30

Post by [deleted] »

atian wrote: post #20

Not Found The requested URL / was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. Always Own Your Platform

[deleted]
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