Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
robertnealan.com
Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
1–10 of 199 posts
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#2I 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.
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#3Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#4I self-host using a static site generator. I've found it to be very nice in the sense that it just takes pennies for the site to run.
I think a lot of folks are still running WordPress of some kind on their own Dreamhost, etc, accounts which feels like self-hosting to me.
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#5My 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?
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#6I self-host using a static site generator. I've found it to be very nice in the sense that it just takes pennies for the site to run. I think a lot of folks are still running WordPress of some kind on their own Dreamhost, etc, accounts which feels like self-hosting to me.
Static site generators are not a good answer for non-engineers, especially if customizations are necessary.
I had self-hosted WordPress on Dreamhost until I got kicked off due to a viral post and my site deleted. Recovering my posts and learning how to use Jekyll/GitHub Pages in less than 24 hours was fun.
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#7No of course it's not dead. Just like the desktop isn't dead just because mobile is exploding.
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#8My 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
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#9I used Ghost for over a year. I was relatively happy with it.
I recently switched to Medium and couldn't be happier. With Ghost I was spending more time tweaking and maintaining purchased themes than I spent writing.
It's really really really fucking hard to run a blog that works well on desktop/tablet/phone and doesn't crash if you get a traffic spike. How many self hosted blogs can handle 500,000 hits in less than a day? Not many.
Medium will probably die someday. That's fine. I own my content and my content URLs. I'll simply port it to a new platform. It wouldn't be the first time.
Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?
#10I am curious when this short-lived moment was suppose to be?
From the article:
"There was a promising short lived moment where smaller, topic-oriented blog networks like Svbtle (amongst others) started appearing, but even those seem to have gone by the wayside and are increasingly being replaced by Medium."
Back in 2002 I co-founded a blogging company. At that time we were competing with the likes of Blogger.com and Typepad.com. There were many other companies, at that time, which I've since forgotten. At one point, around 2003 or 2004, we created a list of all our competitors, and there were at least 100 names on the list.
My point is, the vast bulk of all blogging has always been on 3rd party hosted blogging sites. Self-hosted blogging has always been rare. I self-host my blog, smashcompany.com, on a server at Rackspace, but this has always been a rare option.
All the same, I am intrigued by the question. If anyone has historical data on this, it would be fascinating to know when self-hosted blogs hit their peak. If Technorati.com has survived in its original form, then it would be in possession of this historical data, but sadly, the original Technorati.com is dead.