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Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere

indieweb.org

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Re: Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere

#31

Post by foxfired »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #25
foxfired wrote: post #21

I've restarted blogging last year, going from a handful of blog post to, publishing consistently. All content gets published on my blog first. I've seen an ~8x increase of traffic. I was affected by zero-clicks from Google's AI overview, but the bulk of my traffic now comes from RSS readers. I published a write up just this morning: https://idiallo.com/blog/what-its-like-blogging-in-2025

Hell yeah! Just subscribed. I want to add analytics to my blog too, haven't had any on my sites for about a decade.

Just an FYI, the data collected to make those conclusion was through the server log (Apache2 in my case). So if you run your own server or VPS, you already have this information.

Re: Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere

#32

Post by cosmicgadget »

acessoproibido wrote: post #28
NetOpWibby wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell yeah! Just subscribed. I want to add analytics to my blog too, haven't had any on my sites for about a decade.

Maybe a dumb question but why? Im a firm believer that data collected that doesnt have a clear action associated with it is meaningless - and i couldnt think of an action i would take if my traffic goes up or down on my personal blog - but tbh i mainly blog for myself not really to build an audience, so our objectives might differ

It is kind of fun even if it serves no purpose. Like those end of year recaps by various services, "oh shit I played that much Hades?"

Re: Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere

#33

Post by foxfired »

acessoproibido wrote: post #28
NetOpWibby wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell yeah! Just subscribed. I want to add analytics to my blog too, haven't had any on my sites for about a decade.

Maybe a dumb question but why? Im a firm believer that data collected that doesnt have a clear action associated with it is meaningless - and i couldnt think of an action i would take if my traffic goes up or down on my personal blog - but tbh i mainly blog for myself not really to build an audience, so our objectives might differ

There are some actions you can take. For example, when my traffic plummeted, I saw through my logs that search engines were trying to access my search page with questionable queries. That's when I realized I became a spam vector. I gave a better rundown through the link I shared.

Re: Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere

#34

Post by performative »

doodlesdev wrote: post #2

This strategy is an alternative to PESOS (Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site) [0]. I really like this read on the indieweb website, it explains well why adopt this strategy for federation and emphasizes that "Friends are more important than federation", something a lot of nerds and hackers forget when defending their ideals. [0]: https://indieweb.org/PESOS

superficially it makes me very happy that both strategies make very cute acronyms

Re: Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere

#35

Post by theturtletalks »

merelysounds wrote: post #24

> Syndication can be done fully automatically by the server At the risk of stating the obvious: this can get tricky, many popular social media platforms restrict automated posting. Policies around automation and/or api usage can change often and may not even be fully public as some might overlap anti spam measures.

How does Buffer[0] operate then? Even an open-source alternative to Buffer, Postiz[1], offers Instagram.

0. https://buffer.com

1. https://github.com/gitroomhq/postiz-app

Re: Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere

#36

Post by softwaredoug »

I am not so sure. You need to speak in the native voice of each community. A LinkedIn post vs Tweet vs E-Mail are different. You need to get value from the network directly without expecting a click thru. A lot of engagement + authority happens via the network itself

I think it's more accurate to see blogging as a distinct channel from other types of social media + content marketing

Re: Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere

#37

Post by susam »

Also, don't forget to set up an RSS or Atom feed for your website. Contrary to the recurring claim that RSS is dead, most of the traffic to my website still comes from RSS feeds, even in 2̶0̶2̶5̶ 2026! In fact, one of my silly little games became moderately popular because someone found it in my RSS feed and shared it on HN. [1]

From the referer (sic) data in my web server logs (which is not completely reliable but still offers some insight), the three largest sources of traffic to my website are:

1. RSS feeds - People using RSS aggregator services as well as local RSS reader tools.

2. Newsletters - I was surprised to discover just how many tech newsletters there are on the Web and how active their user bases are. Once in a while, a newsletter picks up one of my silly or quirky posts, which then brings a large number of visits from its followers.

3. Search engines - Traffic from Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing and similar search engines. This is usually for specific tools, games and HOWTO posts available on my website that some visitors tend to return to repeatedly.

[1] https://susam.net/from-web-feed-to-186850-hits.html

Re: Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere

#39

Post by vasco »

susam wrote: post #37

Also, don't forget to set up an RSS or Atom feed for your website. Contrary to the recurring claim that RSS is dead, most of the traffic to my website still comes from RSS feeds, even in 2̶0̶2̶5̶ 2026! In fact, one of my silly little games became moderately popular because someone found it in my RSS feed and shared it on HN. [1] From the referer (sic) data in my web server logs (which is not completely reliable but s…

The question is, do you have this traffic because of RSS client crawlers that pre-loaded the content or from real users. I'm not pro killing RSS by the way, but genuinely doubtful.
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