google killed blogs the day they killed google reader
Blogs are cool.
The whole setting up a website and justifying the cost for a public log/journal…Not so much. It’s still clunky and costly enough that it pushes people to platforms handling all the tech backend for them, whether nonprofit or for profit. I think if enough of the technical side were made less cumbersome (and this is from someone that’s okay with tech jank), then the financial costs wouldn’t be as much of a factor for many since for modest sites they’re already rather low.
Although if I’m overestimating site setup stuff, I’d love to read how. All the research I’ve done has been somewhat discouraging when it comes to handling hosting a site yourself (i.e. security concerns, traffic handling, etc.).
I’m a blogger and a web developer, so IMHO:
Blog-style sites have never been as cheap to run as right now. For small-to-midsize sites run mostly as static sites, it might even be close to free.
Virtually all cost is in the human labor, and the challenge of running a sustainable business model like subscriptions off of “words” which I think are valuable but getting audiences to agree is very hard.
But we might be seeing a turnaround here. I’m hopeful!
For sure, and I’m kinda hopeful too, for more personal sites of all sorts in general tbh.
It’s that technical part though that I think remains the big barrier for many, at least for those that want to more fully hold the reins over their online space.
I all for removing barriers to entry in this space, and if you’re talking about self-hosting everything and wiring up all sorts of bits and bobs of various services together manually, yeah, it’s very technical and daunting. But somebody can get started on Ghost, or WordPress.com, or Buttondown, or ConvertKit or whatever. Lots of ways to write early and often online. Buzzsprout is pretty rad for podcasting as well.
The problem usually boils down to distribution like Nilay said, not hosting. Fediverse seems like a real solution here. Honestly I’ve never been as successful at both blogging and podcasting as I am right now. This isn’t merely a glimpse of some old-school internet nostalgia trip. It’s a whole new world out there and it’s actually better. 🤩
But somebody can get started on Ghost, or WordPress.com, or Buttondown, or ConvertKit or whatever.
Writefreely is an open source alternative compatible with the Fediverse!
Oh yeah, thanks for bringing that up. And maybe we stay away from WordPress.com now with all the weird AI stuff they’ve been up to. 🤪
I don’t know about the current state of the project, but last time I used WriteFreely, it was kind of meh. Very barebone, the server I used often crashed :(
