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How the blog broke the web (2017)

stackingthebricks.com

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Re: How the blog broke the web (2017)

#71

Post by cpsns »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #65

There are many suspects in the "who killed the web" mystery but blogs are low down on that list. The real problem is that building a web page is much, much harder today than it was 25 years ago. Back then you could slap together some HTML, add a picture and an under-construction GIF and call it a day. Everyone with their huge 800x600 monitors would see the same thing. Today you have to take into account not just moni…

> I still see personal websites that are almost unreadable on small phones, for instance.

My personal website is like that and I’ve made no effort to improve the phone experience. I really don’t care if phone users have access or not, on every other device it looks fine.

It’s a personal website, if it looks good on my machine that’s enough for me.

Re: How the blog broke the web (2017)

#72

Post by sph »

bovermyer wrote: post #66
sph wrote: post #50

Some of my favourite "digital garden" websites: - http://100r.co/ - https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/home.html Made by the same people, but the second is more technical. I can't deny that there is a certain sense of visiting someone's home (in this case someone's sailboat ) that is completely absent in the modern, sterile and utilitarian blog format. It is a pleasure to get lost following interesting links, chancing upon…

I do this, too. My site https://benovermyer.com has a blog, but the more interesting stuff is all the _other_ pages. The most frequently updated page is the list of books I've read. Do you have a "digital garden" site?

Not yet, but I've been hacking on Kirby to create a regular blog-style personal website and I just want to throw everything out and have a way to host pure Markdown. Someone recommended PicoCMS elsewhere. That's my weekend sorted.

You are one step away from a garden. Move those links out of "KB" and collect them in the home page.

RSS is a bit harder to do on that type of websites. Here's my crappy definition of a digital garden: a website where most likely you have to write your RSS updates by hand. Not the literal XML but you will have to keep a changelog, because the cool stuff is outside the blog section. See also: https://journal.miso.town/

Re: How the blog broke the web (2017)

#73

Post by brazzy »

janvdberg wrote: post #56

The author seems to be arguing that the technology (i.e. MT in this case or CMS-es in general) that enabled many more people to blog (and therefore they all look alike) is what broke the web. I understand the sentiment. But I rather have more people blogging than not. Because blogs are the web. Many more people should be blogging.

It sounds like you missed the main point of the author: the blog-CMSs did not just impose a certain look, they also imposed some fundamental assumptions about the content, namely that content is produced as a steady stream of distinct "posts", and that the newest posts are the most interesting and massively more visible than "old" ones.

And that is a very different kind of content than webpages that are not inherently ranked in importance and discoverable through a TOC, where updates don't necessarily add new pages but often also extend or modify older ones.

Blogs are not the web. That you could even think of making that statement is the most resounding confirmation that the author is right.

Re: How the blog broke the web (2017)

#74

Post by AndrewStephens »

cpsns wrote: post #71
AndrewStephens wrote: post #65

There are many suspects in the "who killed the web" mystery but blogs are low down on that list. The real problem is that building a web page is much, much harder today than it was 25 years ago. Back then you could slap together some HTML, add a picture and an under-construction GIF and call it a day. Everyone with their huge 800x600 monitors would see the same thing. Today you have to take into account not just moni…

> I still see personal websites that are almost unreadable on small phones, for instance. My personal website is like that and I’ve made no effort to improve the phone experience. I really don’t care if phone users have access or not, on every other device it looks fine. It’s a personal website, if it looks good on my machine that’s enough for me.

That was my opinion for a while as well. It depends on your audience but about 50% of hits to my site come from one mobile device or another and in the end I felt I had to put the effort in to support them.

Re: How the blog broke the web (2017)

#75

Post by pantulis »

nickelpro wrote: post #9

Reference sites still exist, Wikipedia isn't organized by reverse-chronological and MediaWiki is a far more formidable CMS than MT ever was. Same goes for ReadTheDocs, Sphinx, Jekyll, Hugo, or any number of static site generators that power the infinite libraries of documentation, reference material, and personal sites on the web. What the author is bemoaning is the loss of the eclectic, bespoke, personal-style of ho…

Someone, some day, will write an elegy of how TikTok broke social networks.

Re: How the blog broke the web (2017)

#76

Post by shapefrog »

mansoon wrote: post #32
orthoxerox wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What the author is bemoaning is the loss of the eclectic, bespoke, personal-style of homepage that existed in the early web. These sites still exist of course, they're just a much smaller percentage of the content. When I stumble upon a Web 1.0 living fossil, it's a delight every time. Someone felt an overpowering need to say something, they made a website about their favorite topic (be that shoelace knots, unsolve…

All relationships are parasocial.

only those where only one party knows the other exists

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction

Re: How the blog broke the web (2017)

#77

Post by nunez »

Ensorceled wrote: post #68

What really broke the web? 1. SEO click bait crap gumming up the works. 2. Walled gardens (there are many, but Facebook is the worst) 3. Rampant polarization driven by bad actors; governments (both local and foreign), political organizations, extremists, and corporations. 4. Ad tech siphoning off the value of the web and enabling the worst of the other issues. Blogs wouldn't even make my top ten.

i definitely think seo is a bigger killer of the web than blogs are

The Old Web was mostly blogs!

Re: How the blog broke the web (2017)

#78

Post by nunez »

lelanthran wrote: post #44
robinsonb5 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus those with something more in-depth to say now tend to do it in video form.

> Plus those with something more in-depth to say now tends to do it in video form. And, with video form it's even harder to separate the signal from the noise.

and even harder to avoid the ads

Re: How the blog broke the web (2017)

#79

Post by shapefrog »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #65

There are many suspects in the "who killed the web" mystery but blogs are low down on that list. The real problem is that building a web page is much, much harder today than it was 25 years ago. Back then you could slap together some HTML, add a picture and an under-construction GIF and call it a day. Everyone with their huge 800x600 monitors would see the same thing. Today you have to take into account not just moni…

> many suspects in the "who killed the web" mystery

Obviously it is all the fault of Millenials (/s?)

> slap together some HTML, add a picture and an under-construction GIF and call it a day

You forgot the page counter, visitor country flags and auto playing music.

Re: How the blog broke the web (2017)

#80

Post by 082349872349872 »

sushibowl wrote: post #3

There's lots of tools around nowadays that allow you to build a site that doesn't conform to the blog format, but the old web hasn't really made a comeback. I think there is truth in the author's statement: > Here’s the crux of the problem: When something is easy, people will do more of it. writing up whatever daily musing into a short-form article is much easier than carefully organizing and categorizing an entire l…

cf https://search.marginalia.nu
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