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Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

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Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#41
post #29
post #28

[deleted]

Which you run. Please disclose. http://blog.trillsy.com/@kerryusry

Another option that is out there in beta now is http://trillsy.com. You can use existing themes or your own design, it offers more user features, multiple contributors or posting from the public and also has an post type for events with an event calendar. It is worth checking out, beta keys are going out. In the interest of full disclosure this is my service, sorry about missing that when first posting.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#42
post #31

I'll take 99.8% uptime over managing an entire blog infrastructure.

Out of genuine curiosity, what percent of uptime would be worth managing your own infrastructure?

I don't think it's quite a simply answer like X% uptime.

A lot of the decision is the 'quality' of the downtime. For example:

* Is it generally stable, but only going down in peak load situations (obviously no good if you know peak load occurs when you are doing critical new product release/sales etc, but may be okay if you peak load corresponds to non-critical events).

* How long is the outages? If it goes down for 1 minute each day, that may be more acceptable compared to '100%' uptime except one day when it goes out for 365 minutes.

All of that affects the impact that the downtime has on your venture - it's quite possible you might have 'poor' uptime stats, but it has zero effect on your business, in which case the cost/effort savings from using a 'poorer uptime' hosted service may be worth it.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#43
post #40

Ummm.... they're hosting on HEROKU? In 2011, Tumblr was down for 42 hours. In 2011, Heroku was down for 76 hours in one incident alone. And that's all before you get to the hubris of the assumption that your custom coded setup will perform better. A more sensible argument would be to move to a host with a better proven uptime record, such as Blogger (nearly 100%). Sources: http://allthingsd.com/20111215/tumblr-had-42…

No biggie, I can temporary move our blog to another host with a simple DNS change and pulling the static site from our repo. Ah, the power of jekyll!

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#44
post #27

Another problem with hosting with Tumblr is that you can't host the blog on the same domain as your app. The usual solution is to host the blog at blog.example.com. The problem with this is that subdomains are treated by google as a separate domain, so any google juice flowing to your blog does not help your main domain. With SEO, one of the most important things is incoming links and if you split your incoming links…

Are there blog hosting services that one can use in a subfolder? AFAIK, both tumblr and posterous only supports subdomains but not folders.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#45
post #40

Ummm.... they're hosting on HEROKU? In 2011, Tumblr was down for 42 hours. In 2011, Heroku was down for 76 hours in one incident alone. And that's all before you get to the hubris of the assumption that your custom coded setup will perform better. A more sensible argument would be to move to a host with a better proven uptime record, such as Blogger (nearly 100%). Sources: http://allthingsd.com/20111215/tumblr-had-42…

The quoted down time for Tumblr is site wide. Sites are often down for non site wide times. I know from experience. Don't host on Tumblr unless you're MG Siegler and Tumblr will put you on a priority pool that goes down much less.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#46

A Tumblr blog may not be the best solution but spending that many resources on a blog (especially one not featured in the main navigation) is usually out of the question for most startups. For most startups the amount of time invested for a custom Jekyll setup and a downtime script could be replaced with a new feature or a better product/home page. I think its important for startups not to spend too much time bloggin…

I spent 1/2 a day building a blog (including RSS support). I wanted an integrated visual experience that stayed up to date as the website changed (which it is doing a lot right now) and took advantage of the same underlying db and hosting infrastructure. Trying to do that with a different blog engine would have meant tweaking the blog every day, which would be far more effort.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#48
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which you run. Please disclose. http://blog.trillsy.com/@kerryusry

Another option that is out there in beta now is http://trillsy.com . You can use existing themes or your own design, it offers more user features, multiple contributors or posting from the public and also has an post type for events with an event calendar. It is worth checking out, beta keys are going out. In the interest of full disclosure this is my service, sorry about missing that when first posting.

Free trial... wait, I need a beta key? Where are the plans/prices?

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#49
post #22

Like most things, choosing where to host your company blog is a strategic choice that can't be boiled down to a categorical. tumblr has a really amazing community. tumblr's downtime is a fact. The question is, does the community outweigh the downtime? I think you make this decision based on the demographics of the tumblr community vis-a-vis your users / customers. And tumblr isn't just 14 year old girls -- there's a…

Well put. I do marketing work on a few projects that have commercial blogs. In mose cases, we're able to get 1K+ Tumblr followers in Tumblr is comparable to Twitter in that it's a common place to meet your readers/customers. Unlike a self-hosted blog, you don't have to ask visitors to leave where they are to visit you. So you're likely to get a bit more foot traffic/interaction, not to mention people passing it on/sharing it out (via reblogs).

Now if you're an already established service/otherwise famous, you might have no problem getting people to check you out. But even then, Tumblr has its benefits.

I don't think the choice is necessarily all or nothing between self-hosted or Tumblr. Many companies with "real" blogs also have Tumblrs. In many cases companies have multiple Tumblrs. (Not unlike Twitter, it's becoming common to have a separate Tumblr for different events/products/branches/divisions. IBM has at least 3. NBC has at least 4...)

I won't disagree that Tumblr has horrible performance issues. But it's still worth it. Twitter 3 years ago had bad performance issues, but it was/is still definitely investing in. No social site is forever, but they're great tools as long as you're aware of costs + benefits.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#50

A Tumblr blog may not be the best solution but spending that many resources on a blog (especially one not featured in the main navigation) is usually out of the question for most startups. For most startups the amount of time invested for a custom Jekyll setup and a downtime script could be replaced with a new feature or a better product/home page. I think its important for startups not to spend too much time bloggin…

I spent 1/2 a day building a blog (including RSS support). I wanted an integrated visual experience that stayed up to date as the website changed (which it is doing a lot right now) and took advantage of the same underlying db and hosting infrastructure. Trying to do that with a different blog engine would have meant tweaking the blog every day, which would be far more effort.

I agree with this notion. I would never use a 3rd party blog engine with it's own branding/UI and use that for my own site which has naturally a different branding/UI.

It's like having an @aol.com email address rather than your own domain. It looks unprofessional at best.

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