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Own your work

josem.co

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Re: Own your work

#31

Post by cableshaft »

And then you die, and you stop paying for your own web host, and it all goes away anyway, more easily than if you had posted on Medium or whatever (because if you're still alive you could keep migrating/syndicating your data to other services if they go under).

That basically happened with James Mathe. He was the owner of Minion Games, and he had an incredible tome of board game publishing on Kickstarter advice on his blog.

He died suddenly one day in 2019, and his self-hosted site went under. You can still read it to a certain extent thanks to archive.org[1], but as thankful as I am for archive.org, they don't have the best user experience.

Meanwhile if he had posted it on blogspot or on BoardGameGeek (which supports user blogs), it'd still be fully available today.

I think it's important to have a self-hosting solution, but I think you also need an alternative. The POSSE solution mentioned above would be better than only self-hosting.

Ideally these websites would have better data preservation and archiving processes, though, and too many just don't have anything in place. Because you're just not going to be able to convince everyone to host their own.

I'd settle for automatic conversion to text-only archives, that could be good enough while making the required space much more miniscule.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190617212658/http://www.jamesm...

Re: Own your work

#32

Post by alin23 »

paxys wrote: post #25

The underlying truth behind all such discussions is that too many people focus on the mechanics of content hosting and delivery but have nothing special to actually share. So they will spend all their time engineering the perfect blog site from scratch or moving from platform to platform looking for an ideological fit while no one really cares about consuming any of their output. My advice is always to forget about t…

Yep, completely agree with this. I wrote about how I created my blog workflow [1] so that I can write from my iPhone and easily publish notes. And it’s a lot of work that on Substack you get for free.

Also I can’t say that I enjoyed tinkering with Go templates, finicky file syncing etc. just for publishing some Markdown text in a pretty package.

If I had to do it again, I would choose Substack, and keep my Markdown files backed up just like I do now. In the event of having to switch, I can always just publish those files elsewhere.

And if Substack also supports custom domains, I would also use that to avoid dead links.

There are cases where your own site is needed however: for unique presentations like those on ciechanow.ski, for sites where the visual look is a defining feature of what is presented etc.

[1] https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/How%20I%20write%20this%20blog...

Re: Own your work

#33

Post by alex_suzuki »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

What is old is new again This was basically the only option in the early 90s before geocities etc... So most of us who were on the web in the 90s did exactly that. Difference was, when you turned your computer off for the night, your site was down If you were really fancy you had a dedicated T1 line, but those were for rich people only I've been on my own domain for well over a decade and my CI process hasn't changed…

I used to have a page on Geocities back in the 90s, wasn’t it just plain HTML, uploaded via FTP? Too long ago for me to remember…

Re: Own your work

#34

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

alin23 wrote: post #32
paxys wrote: post #25

The underlying truth behind all such discussions is that too many people focus on the mechanics of content hosting and delivery but have nothing special to actually share. So they will spend all their time engineering the perfect blog site from scratch or moving from platform to platform looking for an ideological fit while no one really cares about consuming any of their output. My advice is always to forget about t…

Yep, completely agree with this. I wrote about how I created my blog workflow [1] so that I can write from my iPhone and easily publish notes. And it’s a lot of work that on Substack you get for free. Also I can’t say that I enjoyed tinkering with Go templates, finicky file syncing etc. just for publishing some Markdown text in a pretty package. If I had to do it again, I would choose Substack, and keep my Markdown f…

That video of you writing on the ipad was hilarious. Definitely not what I was imagining.

Re: Own your work

#35

Post by alin23 »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #34
alin23 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, completely agree with this. I wrote about how I created my blog workflow [1] so that I can write from my iPhone and easily publish notes. And it’s a lot of work that on Substack you get for free. Also I can’t say that I enjoyed tinkering with Go templates, finicky file syncing etc. just for publishing some Markdown text in a pretty package. If I had to do it again, I would choose Substack, and keep my Markdown f…

That video of you writing on the ipad was hilarious. Definitely not what I was imagining.

Heh thanks ^_^ that is the effect I was looking to convey. You have to try it, it’s a really satisfying way of writing. Feels like handwriting but works 10 times faster with less hand cramping

Re: Own your work

#36

Post by pjot »

paxys wrote: post #25

The underlying truth behind all such discussions is that too many people focus on the mechanics of content hosting and delivery but have nothing special to actually share. So they will spend all their time engineering the perfect blog site from scratch or moving from platform to platform looking for an ideological fit while no one really cares about consuming any of their output. My advice is always to forget about t…

For some the appeal _is_ the mechanics - it’s fun to build something and put it on the web even if it’s only for yourself.

Re: Own your work

#37

Post by stuartjohnson12 »

podviaznikov wrote: post #28
podviaznikov wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what a compliment! I obviously cannot analyze my own style because that is my style and how I write so reflection from other people are so fascinating. And thank you for commenting on this specific essay. I’ve just read it again and unfortunately it still holds, almost 2 years since it was published. But I think I am starting to develop my own tools to work against general tendencies at least in my personal life. I w…

and curious what you currently think on this topic too. Specifically about solutions. At any level. Individual or societal.

I liked the first half more than the second half. I think you establish the problem very effectively, but in the second half your own indignation shines brighter than inquisition.

I've yet to see an answer that satisfies me here. Many times, inquisition is indeed used as a plausibly deniable mask for ideology. Similarly, I don't think you or I will ever reasonably be free of our own personal ideologies.

If I had a good answer, the post wouldn't be interesting to me. I could rattle off one of the common answers (technocracy, degrowth, investment in education, something something social media bad) but those seem tired and wrong to me. This kind of topic is one where it's easy to find the obvious target (this person, this system, this policy, this organisation) and start shunting blame, but that's ironically falling afoul of the problem itself circularly.

There's no solution I stand behind with enough confidence to state it on a public forum like this.

For now, I'll just have to keep asking questions.

Re: Own your work

#38

Post by twelvechairs »

A case this week that underlines the importance or both self hosting and also of archive.org is this weeks shutdown of 'zippyshare' which was used by some mp3 blog sites.

One particularly large one that shut down with zippyshare is 'Holland tunnel drive' which has been captured by archive.org in a couple of locations below.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170711205314/http://hollandtun...

https://archive.org/details/jillem-full-archive

Many similar sites had gone through similar isssues with shutdowns of megaupload and similar. Or being kicked off blogspot etc. The ones that survive are generally self hosted. But few older ones been archived on archive.org like this has.

Re: Own your work

#39

Post by iamben »

Counterpoint - this is a bit like saying "sell the product from your own website, you'll get 100% of the sales and own the customer!"

Totally true, but good luck getting the customer to your site. Way easier to put your product on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, wherever people are already shopping AS WELL - and take a hit on profit (at least initially) and figure out how you build off that.

Leverage all the social media and blog sites and substacks and whatever that you can. Build a base and then figure it out from there.

Re: Own your work

#40

Post by breck »

paxys wrote: post #25

The underlying truth behind all such discussions is that too many people focus on the mechanics of content hosting and delivery but have nothing special to actually share. So they will spend all their time engineering the perfect blog site from scratch or moving from platform to platform looking for an ideological fit while no one really cares about consuming any of their output. My advice is always to forget about t…

I must build static site compilers and markdown dialects so that my children may have liberty to write prose and poetry.
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