Before looking at self-hosted blogs it would have to be looked at how many new beginners are being created in self-hosting alone? Before we can self-host blogs, we have to self-host anything.
Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
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Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#22It's amazing that the web, which was really originally built primarily as a distributed publishing platform, has gotten so damn complicated to publish to.
Right now I've got my own self hosted platform, running Wordpress on a Digital Ocean droplet. The constant security updates for Wordpress are a nightmare, and it seems I have to hack both my theme and my post code every time I want to make a slightly interactive post. Never mind that there doesn't seem to be a decent way to preview posts on mobile.
As others have mentioned, it seems the best way to get more people in control of their own platforms would be with easier static tools.
On that note, I've been really impressed with org-mode and pandoc. I've been writing and generating code within a text based environment lately, but it still feels as though the process hasn't really budged or improved much at all in the past 15 years. With org-mode and pandoc, along with babel, I can write and test code, embed images, and generate decent html/pdf all in one go.
But for the casual user, I think it's become more difficult to self publish over the years, not less. The tools we've built have gotten pretty embarrassing if our goal is to get as diverse of a population as possible speaking and sharing their ideas openly on the web.
Cheers to everyone still working on tools like org-mode, pandoc, and latex. It's still relevant, and it still does a great job. If you haven't checked them out, take a look. I was certainly surprised by how far these projects have been taken.
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#23I use and highly recommend hexo.io with it's S3 deployment plugin. It's as good as Jekyll but easier to modify and theme if you come from a web dev background as it's written in NodeJS rather than Ruby.
> It's as good as Jekyll but easier to modify and theme if you could from a web dev background as it's written in NodeJS rather than Ruby. Er, are you implying that Ruby is not a language for people with a web development background? Regardless, most of Jekyll tweaking is done with Liquid templates, which are mostly agnostic. (You do use Ruby for plugins, yes, but they are not super important.)
Not at all. Just that more web developers know JavaScript than Ruby considering front end devs use it too.
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#24My problem with Medium is that it lends this amazing aura of credibility to everything that is published on it. I think they've hit on the design equivalent of the brown note (of South Park fame) which makes readers mentally incontinent vis-a-vis the credibility of the source of the actual text... Or maybe it's just me?
Not just you. Before I found out what Medium was, I thought it was some new journalism franchise with a lot of amateur contributors. (I guess in a weird way that's what blogging is?)
I would have to admit this was the case for me as well I didn't really pay much attention to it always thought it was the "print" version of VICE or something similar (and yes I know VICE is technically one or well at least started as a magazine).
I actually thought that Medium was part of VICE media for some time mostly because anytime I got content linked from it was from Motherboard or something else affiliated with them.
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#25It's certainly not dead, but the relation maybe has changed a little. It started off as a public diary service and place for discussions and now it's more of a traffic driver for marketing purposes.
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#26I own a self-hosted blog and am actually in the process of deciding whether to transfer over to medium. To be honest I'm pretty much decided that I will, because it's just easier, not to mention I can save myself some hosting fees. The key questions of the debate on the cons side of switching, assuming you're blogging for fun and not thinking particularly about advertising or massively customised SEO strategies, seem…
What would you have in place in case Medium went away or lost the data compared to what you already have?
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#27Getting hosted by someone else is incredibly convenient. They take care of all the work of maintenance, security, reliability, and even give you tools to increase your visibility on the web and design your blog. IMHO only hobbyists or people with a very good reason should self-host. If you don't like one company's terms, look into the many other blog providers out there.
You could still happily roll your own Wordpress site but have it hosted with a managed provider. Also stick something like Headway Theme in there and you get a pretty easy setup even for not technical folks.
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#28My problem with Medium is that it lends this amazing aura of credibility to everything that is published on it. I think they've hit on the design equivalent of the brown note (of South Park fame) which makes readers mentally incontinent vis-a-vis the credibility of the source of the actual text... Or maybe it's just me?
I think it might be you. I treat it like I would Wordpress.com
My first run-in with Medium was with actual journalists (see: War is Boring whom have left Medium to their own site now). So while I understood there were many one-off blogs like mine that shouldn't be considered professional, many were and that lent any blog on the site some level of credibility.
Of course - all of that credibility was lost when a few bloggers were censored and kicked from the platform for wrongthink. I don't use Medium anymore.
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#29My problem with Medium is that it lends this amazing aura of credibility to everything that is published on it. I think they've hit on the design equivalent of the brown note (of South Park fame) which makes readers mentally incontinent vis-a-vis the credibility of the source of the actual text... Or maybe it's just me?
Funny, after reading the first half dozen or so Medium articles I felt exactly the opposite. It was junk and now I expect junk from Medium and was a bit surprised to read a good article a couple of weeks ago. Since then it's been junk again and unless I'm really really bored or the subject matter is fascinating seeing "Medium" in a HN post means I skip the article altogether.
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#30My problem with Medium is that it lends this amazing aura of credibility to everything that is published on it. I think they've hit on the design equivalent of the brown note (of South Park fame) which makes readers mentally incontinent vis-a-vis the credibility of the source of the actual text... Or maybe it's just me?
I think they've just managed a good design - mostly by resisting the temptation to show off as so many designers do. It's very minimal - if anything it looks similar to the hand-written no-styles websites that academics often write (that look like http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ )