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Why I Blog

craigkerstiens.com

11–20 of 22 posts

Re: Why I Blog

#11
post #9

On a slight tangent, I love reading the first posts of a blog. Especially when the subsequent posts are about the person building or designing said blog. It it’s really hard to find those kinds of posts or blogs. All the results on google are blog spam articles about making money with a blog. Can anyone recommend some? Here’s one of my favourite examples. https://destroytoday.com/blog/hello-world

I started collecting personal blogs on my site. You can find links here https://manuelmoreale.com/personal-blogs

At that point you can just go to the first entry and see if it’s something that’s of interest to you.

I also collected some 1000+ sites on https://theforest.link and I’d say a solid 80% are probably personal blogs.

So hopefully there’s at least a few of those firsts posts you’re talking about in there.

Re: Why I Blog

#12
Biggest benefit for me personally is the random interactions with people across the world that write in after they read something on my site.

Being able to exchange thoughts and ideas with different people is priceless.

Re: Why I Blog

#14
I write for 10 minutes every day. No word limit/count to hit. Just 10 minutes. It’s a surprisingly effective way to “flush” my head and get on with my life.

It’s become part journal, part newsletter fuel, and part self documentation. I have no specific goal when my fingers hit the keyboard other than writing for 10 minutes.

And it’s glorious to see where my thoughts take me. Sometimes I get so wrapped up I come out on the other side, an hour later and 1500 words lighter. Other times I struggle to even make a coherent sentence.

Removing the need to be polished and perfect, I free myself to write as a stream of conscious. If I could disable my backspace key I would. Pops in my head = write it down. A surprisingly freeing exercise that I look forward to each morning.

And if you’re curious, https://masilotti.com/articles - you can see how I go from “serious” stuff to more fun, and then swing back the pendulum a few times. Enjoy!

Re: Why I Blog

#15
I have rewritten my blog a few times...

From a static HTML/CSS site to Ruby on Rails. From Rails to a pure Go MVC with my own templating format. From the custom Go server to static HTML/CSS on Github pages; to finally a Next.js with server side rendering and using markdown with frontmatter.

I think the point of blogging is to do crazy things you can't get away with at work :)

Re: Why I Blog

#16
post #9

On a slight tangent, I love reading the first posts of a blog. Especially when the subsequent posts are about the person building or designing said blog. It it’s really hard to find those kinds of posts or blogs. All the results on google are blog spam articles about making money with a blog. Can anyone recommend some? Here’s one of my favourite examples. https://destroytoday.com/blog/hello-world

I started collecting personal blogs on my site. You can find links here https://manuelmoreale.com/personal-blogs At that point you can just go to the first entry and see if it’s something that’s of interest to you. I also collected some 1000+ sites on https://theforest.link and I’d say a solid 80% are probably personal blogs. So hopefully there’s at least a few of those firsts posts you’re talking about in there.

Nice list and blog you have. You now have one subscriber more to your RSS feed. By the way, I disagree with your stance on RSS excerpts. ;)

Re: Why I Blog

#17
post #9

On a slight tangent, I love reading the first posts of a blog. Especially when the subsequent posts are about the person building or designing said blog. It it’s really hard to find those kinds of posts or blogs. All the results on google are blog spam articles about making money with a blog. Can anyone recommend some? Here’s one of my favourite examples. https://destroytoday.com/blog/hello-world

I started collecting personal blogs on my site. You can find links here https://manuelmoreale.com/personal-blogs At that point you can just go to the first entry and see if it’s something that’s of interest to you. I also collected some 1000+ sites on https://theforest.link and I’d say a solid 80% are probably personal blogs. So hopefully there’s at least a few of those firsts posts you’re talking about in there.

I like your blog setup.I use HTMLy for mine. Though the recent iteration seems to have a few bugs i need to go back and fix (im not the creator of HTMLy, but i like the fact that its all php and .md files, not database etc)

I cant bring myself to talk about much more than stuff i build or do in tech in mine. I'm too concerned with me saying something controversial and it causing me issues in the real world.

And sometimes even struggle to post. No one reads it so its fine though. I find it helps me parse out my thoughts.

I did go ahead and add mine to your list though.

https://www.htmly.com/

Re: Why I Blog

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started collecting personal blogs on my site. You can find links here https://manuelmoreale.com/personal-blogs At that point you can just go to the first entry and see if it’s something that’s of interest to you. I also collected some 1000+ sites on https://theforest.link and I’d say a solid 80% are probably personal blogs. So hopefully there’s at least a few of those firsts posts you’re talking about in there.

Nice list and blog you have. You now have one subscriber more to your RSS feed. By the way, I disagree with your stance on RSS excerpts. ;)

Can you tell me why? I’m always interested in hearing from people with different opinions.

Re: Why I Blog

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started collecting personal blogs on my site. You can find links here https://manuelmoreale.com/personal-blogs At that point you can just go to the first entry and see if it’s something that’s of interest to you. I also collected some 1000+ sites on https://theforest.link and I’d say a solid 80% are probably personal blogs. So hopefully there’s at least a few of those firsts posts you’re talking about in there.

I like your blog setup.I use HTMLy for mine. Though the recent iteration seems to have a few bugs i need to go back and fix (im not the creator of HTMLy, but i like the fact that its all php and .md files, not database etc) I cant bring myself to talk about much more than stuff i build or do in tech in mine. I'm too concerned with me saying something controversial and it causing me issues in the real world. And somet…

> I'm too concerned with me saying something controversial and it causing me issues in the real world.

I can't obviously comment on this since I don't know about your specific situation. My experience is that as long as you try to be honest and open to dialogue, online interactions are great. I had my blog since 2017 and I had nothing but enjoyable conversations with people via email.

Re: Why I Blog

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice list and blog you have. You now have one subscriber more to your RSS feed. By the way, I disagree with your stance on RSS excerpts. ;)

Can you tell me why? I’m always interested in hearing from people with different opinions.

Well, I really get your point. If I would use RSS mainly for it's newspaper-like newsreader function, excerpts would indeed be the last thing I want. Just give me the full article, in that case.

I foresee another function for RSS. I call it Really Social Sites, and what I do with it is more like a timeline. A timeline that you see at regular social media. My site offers it's own feed to the web, but it also has a reader-function where I follow all kinds of websites. So far nothing different. Except that I can only see short excerpts from the sites I follow. I do this on purpose, because I think it's important to visit the site. I think it's respectful, because people put effort in their sites, people want to know - at least a little bit - how many visitors they had, maybe also where these visitors came from. And from a user point of view, while visiting somebody's website you might stumble upon something unexpectedly nice. One might be compelled to leave a message for the site owner on some contact form after a good article. Etc.

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