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  • Showing only topics with the tag "blogging". Back to normal view
    1. Reducing the friction of publishing online?

      I'm looking for ways to make it easier to publish on my personal blog. I've had WordPress blogs in the past, and I find that they set up a constant grind of upgrading β€” upgrading core, upgrading...

      I'm looking for ways to make it easier to publish on my personal blog. I've had WordPress blogs in the past, and I find that they set up a constant grind of upgrading β€” upgrading core, upgrading plugins, reconfiguring the upgraded components, fixing the things the upgrades break...

      It was stealing too much of the little time I have to devote to my blog. So, when I built my current blog, I built in on a static site generator (11ty). It took longer to set up than just writing HTML and CSS, but it does make it a bit quicker to get something up since it will build pages from markdown, and it doesn't require a ton of upgrading every time I want to sit down and write something. Sure, I could upgrade a library or two each time I sit down with it, but it's just spitting out HTML so I don't really need to.

      That said, it's still more friction than I want. I'm currently obsessed with mmm.page. I love the playful UI. I love the design language it encourages. I love how it makes the tech get out of the way and puts you closer to getting your content out. That said, there are several things I don't love:

      1. It's not accessible. I can't pick which elements to use. I can't write alt text for images.
      2. It's not open source. This means a lot of things. It means when the developer loses interest, it will die. It means we can't evaluate it. It means we can't self-host it. Speaking of these...
      3. Development seems to be slow. There's one item on the roadmap. It was suggested in April. I have a feeling it's not making the money the developer had hoped and they've lost enthusiasm for it.
      4. We can't self-host it. Now, this means I'm stuck paying $10 a month. Tomorrow, that could go up to $20, and there's nothing I can do about it.
      5. There's no easily apparent escape hatch. I guess I could just download the pages it wrote and host them elsewhere, but that's probably not ideal. If the developer does decide to close up shop or double the price, I want an easy way to take my site and go somewhere else.
      6. As far as I can tell, it doesn't support RSS. I am a staunch believer in RSS, and I believe the web sucks without it. I won't want to run a site that doesn't offer it.

      All these problems leave me with a web site that provides too much friction and a solution to that problem that leaves many others in its wake. Does anyone know of an alternative that's similar that could address some or most of these issues? I'm a developer and I still would like to be able to publish online without doing developer-y stuff, so it's easy to see how social media has been able to bottle up so much content on the web. I'd love to think there's something that could bring us out of this dystopia... or at least make it easier for me to share a list of the games I've been playing recently. πŸ˜…

      26 votes
    2. Wordpress hosting

      My girlfriend has started a small business and is looking into a blogging platform. What she has tried so far hasn't been great. She has decided to go the WordPress route and this is where I am...

      My girlfriend has started a small business and is looking into a blogging platform. What she has tried so far hasn't been great. She has decided to go the WordPress route and this is where I am involved.

      Any suggestions for hosting providers? What features should I be considering or anything else I should be aware of when it comes to picking a provider?
      Right now I am looking at Bluehost vs Hostinger. Bluehost just seem to be the most advertised. Hostinger seemed to offer more for the same cost.

      12 votes
    3. What would you like to see in your dream food blog?

      I am in the process of starting up my own food blog. I have no hopes or aspirations of being huge or making money, it will solely be a labor of love and an outlet for my love of food to share with...

      I am in the process of starting up my own food blog. I have no hopes or aspirations of being huge or making money, it will solely be a labor of love and an outlet for my love of food to share with the world.

      Unfortunately, I don’t have a specific niche that will be targeting and was looking to crowd source opinions on what people would feel they would like in a food blog. I’m hoping to avoid suggestions like β€œless convoluted stories about your grandmothers tablecloth for 3 pages before the recipe” since I think we can all agree on that front.

      Some of you may be thinking the world needs another blog like you need another asshole, and that may be true. However, part of my impetus was that many of the recipe blogs I find online have the same generic 30-40 recipes with minimal variation. Others of higher quality are moving behind paywalls. My goal is to try to include slightly more obscure recipes from all over the world, tried/tested/optimized for simplicity in cooking and flavor, or more unique variations on more common recipes. I also aspire to do some articles a bit more experimental / scientific in nature in the vein of some of J Kenji Lopez Alts articles a la serious eats but that is a larger aspiration for down the road.

      I welcome any suggestions or sharing of your current favorite food blogs. I know the current social media trend is YouTube, TikTok, and the like. However as I find myself here with you all, you may understand my preference for sticking with the written word (and occasional photos). Cheers!

      13 votes
    4. Thoughts on Notes/Blog/Personal Website Directory Structure

      :wave: everyone, I've been thinking about where to put non-technical blog posts and what to call them since, so far, I have bookmark/, cheatsheet/, howto/, note/, snippet/ and tutorial/ folders...

      :wave: everyone, I've been thinking about where to put non-technical blog posts and what to call them since, so far, I have bookmark/, cheatsheet/, howto/, note/, snippet/ and tutorial/ folders already[1].

      I think those cover most of the things I like writing about and I intend to share, but I also enjoy poetry, analyzing movies, political commentary and writing an essay here and there.

      Following from that, I kept essay/, poem/ and commentary/ around for whenever I felt like sharing some of my non-technical writings, but I don't like those folders :smile:. They seem way too granular, more akin to tags than categories, both of which are contained in each file's metadata.

      Tags, however, don't feel like a "pillar"/category of a Zettelkasten/ramblings/thoughts crate. They're empty at the moment and in draft/, so it's the perfect chance to do some re-structuring and avoid the issues I faced when I ditched blog/category and chose the current structure.

      In case you're asking yourself why I didn't put everything in the same folder, as they reflect categories and each .md file has category metadata already, it's because the drafts in draft/ became unmanageable (+120). So, in an effort to give myself an easier way to navigate and edit, I decided /folders were going to reflect the categories that existed. I'm aware it can be that after note #50 or something I have the same problem, and thus it wouldn't have made a difference whether notes were together with tutorials or not. I've decided to deal with that problem when it arises :)

      I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts! Would you keep essay/, poem/ and commentary/ or merge them into something else? note/ are short and wouldn't feel right for longer ramblings. I am not a big fan of writings/ as everything is a "writing", prose/ also doesn't quite fit and so far the only one I've sort of liked is reflection/ since essays, poems, and comments on happenings are the result of reflecting.

      /rant over, I know, I'm overthinking it. Let those not guilty throw the first stone :)

      [1] I've removed quite a bit of the irrelevant stuff but kept what I believe is relevant, but feel free to ask away in case something necessary is missing.

      .
      β”œβ”€β”€ bookmark/
      β”‚Β Β  └── sample.md
      β”œβ”€β”€ cheatsheet/
      β”‚Β Β  β”œβ”€β”€ sample.md
      β”‚Β Β  └── sample.md-data
      β”œβ”€β”€ commentary/
      β”œβ”€β”€ draft/
      β”‚Β Β  β”œβ”€β”€ bookmark/
      β”‚Β Β  β”‚Β Β  └── sample.md
      β”‚Β Β  β”œβ”€β”€ cheatsheet/
      β”‚Β Β  β”‚Β Β  └── sample.md
      β”‚Β Β  └── ...
      β”œβ”€β”€ essay/
      β”œβ”€β”€ extra/
      β”‚Β Β  β”œβ”€β”€ archive/
      β”‚Β Β  β”œβ”€β”€ blob/
      β”‚Β Β  └── robots.txt
      β”œβ”€β”€ howto/
      β”‚Β Β  └── sample.md
      β”œβ”€β”€ note/
      β”‚Β Β  └── sample.md
      β”œβ”€β”€ poem
      β”œβ”€β”€ private/
      β”‚Β Β  └── sample.md
      β”œβ”€β”€ snippet/
      β”‚Β Β  └── sample.md
      └── tutorial/
          β”œβ”€β”€ sample.md
          └── sample.md-data/
              β”œβ”€β”€ sample.png
              └── ...
      
      10 votes
    5. What modern alternatives for webrings are there?

      After the debacle with Reddit, Twitter, et al some of my friends an I decided to stop posting to corporate walled gardens and instead focus on sharing and co-creating. I remember reading about...

      After the debacle with Reddit, Twitter, et al some of my friends an I decided to stop posting to corporate walled gardens and instead focus on sharing and co-creating.

      I remember reading about modern alternatives for WebRings two years ago, but can't for the life of me find them or remember what they were called! Tiny web? TinyRing? SmallWeb? Does this ring a bell for some of you?

      Alternatively, I'd appreciate if you could share ideas and approaches to alternative/indy syndication or agreggation.

      Thanks !

      EDIT: ding ding ding https://indieweb.org/Micro.blog

      25 votes
    6. The Proverbial Pen #2

      Thanks a lot for the responses yesterday. I'm glad to be on Tildes, this seems to be a very vibrant and happy community unlike many others! Today is the second post in a series (hopefully) of...

      Thanks a lot for the responses yesterday. I'm glad to be on Tildes, this seems to be a very vibrant and happy community unlike many others! Today is the second post in a series (hopefully) of writing exercises to get rid of my writer's block.


      Today is the second day of my battle against Writer's Block. A very basic question I want to ask is what exactly is writing inspiration and where does it come from? If it comes from within you (as many claim) then why doesn't it always keep flowing like a river, why is it so scarce a resource? The mechanisms of subconscious mind are probably too complex for even the mind itself to work out!

      What I've found though is that it's much easier to do freehand writing or writing nothing in particular (as I'm doing now) but it gets a bit tricky when you want to write about something specific like an article or research paper or a book. That's when you must start worrying about the content quality, research material, story background, plot, etc. But even freehand writing is a great exercise I think to flex your writing muscles at frequent intervals and ensure that they stay in order.

      Of course, other antagonists like lethargy, procrastination, impostor syndrome, self censoring, etc. are always waiting in their closets to jump out and play their part in the battle! These are like natural foes. Whatever you do about them, they'll always lurk back in some form or other given the right environment! Especially in 2022 when oodles of great literature already exist on any given topic, the pressure to perform on a writer is tremendous. Wiser, smarter and more intelligent people than me already seem to have written whatever there is to write about literature, mathematics, computer science, physical sciences, social sciences, etc., what exactly is there left for me to write anyways? So the impostor wonders aloud!

      When all else fails, the pundits ask you to "write about yourself" or "write about your own experiences". That's easy to say actually but my own life has been so mundane and ordinary (just like most other people's, I suppose) that there is hardly anything inspiring or worthwhile to get out of that. They say "open yourself up" but what if there is nothing inside but just a hollow and empty shell when you open up? My life has been one of the most "typical" or "average" as I'd put it whereas writing is supposed to be creative and extra ordinary.

      Another obvious source of writing is reading. They say the more you read, a better writer you'll become as you'll keep adding to the raw material to pick from. I have a good collection of books and I used to read a lot many years ago, an activity which has reduced a lot lately due to work and other factors. Just like writer's block, I also seem to have gotten myself a "reader's block" if there is such a thing!

      As I keep battling with the proverbial pen day after day, I hope something good will come out of it and I might become a better writer than I presently am. Today is just the second day, I just hope I'll be able to keep up with this pace and write daily. Please wish me luck! Thanks for reading.

      5 votes
    7. The Great Wall Of Text #1

      From today, I've decided to write at least something every day until the writer's block frees me of its hold. I face this from time to time and don't really understand what to do, there is no cure...

      From today, I've decided to write at least something every day until the writer's block frees me of its hold. I face this from time to time and don't really understand what to do, there is no cure really except hoping that something will happen or some inspiration will strike at some point causing me to write something.

      One of the reasons could be that I'm a computer programmer and mostly blog about technology topics. But programming isn't really a topic or subject on which you can keep churning out rivers of literature, can you? It's a very exact and precise science just like mathematics and I feel most things that must be written about it are already written. In fact, I pretty much feel the same way about any kind of topic, we are literally swimming in oceans of information already! That's probably one of the reasons that keeps me from writing. I don't want to unnecessarily add my useless pennies to great literature contributed by people who are wiser and smarter than me.

      But then the question arises what should I write about or blog about? I can write about nothing in particular and whatever that comes to mind (like I'm doing now) or I can write a research or news article or something. But I don't know how exactly people go about that. Most articles today are opinion pieces anyway and mine will probably be the same. But where do these "opinion writers" get their information from? There have to be some primary or base level sources. What are they? Can you recommend some good ones?

      Another thing that keeps me from writing freely is all the environment you see on the interwebs these days which is just so toxic and discouraging, isn't it? It's not just about having a thick skin anymore but you live in a constant fear of getting canceled for something as trivial as your mere mentioning of some individual (about whom you may not even be fully aware of). I have to think a million times before writing something if this will offend any netizen or not, my guess is that many other writers must be going through the same thing and this is what results in the infamous contemporary expression, Self-Censorship!

      If you're going to constantly self-censor yourself and kill many great ideas when they're just in their infancy, I don't think you'll be left with a lot of creative stuff to write and you may not even feel like writing anymore. Self-Censorship beyond a basic extent (like filtering of abusive words and phrases, etc.) is counter-productive and should be highly discouraged in my humble opinion.

      Other natural antagonists like lethargy, laziness, procrastination, etc. also need to be blamed, of course! Sometimes, I don't find the motivation to read or do further research on a topic. Without reading, you can't get enough material to write, a good writer must be an avid book worm also. I feel sure I can contribute a lot to the literary world some day and I've decided to keep battling with my proverbial pen (actually the keyboard!) until the day it happens.

      I think that's enough for today, might come up with another great wall of text tomorrow! Sorry if I wasted your time.

      9 votes
    8. What blogs/newsletters do you subscribe to and why?

      Back in the day I was a hardcore Google Reader (RIP) user, and following that I continued to use https://feedly.com/ for many years, but eventually I found myself falling behind on all my feeds...

      Back in the day I was a hardcore Google Reader (RIP) user, and following that I continued to use https://feedly.com/ for many years, but eventually I found myself falling behind on all my feeds and stopped checking it.

      Recently, I signed for Inoreader and I've started reading more blogs again. It also has the nice feature of letting you subscribe to email newsletters too, which is quite nice since I find them annoying to deal with in my email inbox but convenient in the feed reader.

      I'm wondering what blogs and newsletters folks on Tildes subscribe to.

      Here are a few of my favorites:

      Blogs:

      Newsletters:

      This is just a slice. I can share my entire list if people are interested. But I'm curious about what feeds others enjoy, on anything from film and furniture to "movie-set" urbanism. What are you reading?

      20 votes
    9. Suppose we make Tildes topics a bit more like little blogs by adding support for "updates?"

      I've previously written about long-running topics and I've asked about software for blogging. But I keep coming back to doing some simple blogging on Tildes. I don't think Tildes should try to...

      I've previously written about long-running topics and I've asked about software for blogging. But I keep coming back to doing some simple blogging on Tildes. I don't think Tildes should try to compete with real blogging software, but maybe Tildes can support a minimal version of it, enough to make it worth doing it here when starting an independent blog isn't worth the effort? An example would be a project diary (like for my accordion synthesizer project). We could encourage people to start a topic for each of their creative projects that they want to talk about and to post updates as they make progress. Or, perhaps this would be a way to cover some ongoing story that they want to live-blog?

      I've refined my ideas a bit about how it might work: Suppose a Tildes topic contains a list of zero or more updates in chronological order? Only the original author can post an update, but anyone can write comments responding to any update. When you post an update to one of your topics, the comment tree for each previous update gets collapsed, encouraging people to comment on the latest update.

      When a topic gets an update, it reappears in the topic list with a separate set of votes, showing both the original topic's title and the update's title concatenated. Any old listing is removed, so we don't show the same topic twice. However, maybe the topic heading shows the last three updates or so if the topic is getting multiple updates in a short period of time, as might happen when live-blogging.

      12 votes
    10. We need an alternative to Medium, and it’s not Wordpress

      Introduction I hate medium and I think it should die a slow death. I tried to get some information on the subject to substantiate my belief. What Medium Does Bad Medium is slow On Gmetrix,...

      Introduction

      I hate medium and I think it should die a slow death. I tried to get some information on the subject to substantiate my belief.

      What Medium Does Bad

      Medium is slow

      On Gmetrix, medium.com has a F PageSpeed Score, with a 11.8MB Total Page Size and a Fully Loaded Time of 12.4s . A random article got a little better, with a D score

      Pingdom gives Medium a B score, with a page size of Page size 12.4 MB and Load time 2.15s (much better). This is from San Francisco, USA.

      Probably because I’m closer, the results for SΓ£o Paulo, Brazil, are marginally better. The B score remains, but Load time dropped to 1.68s.

      Tildes gotta a C on GTmetrix and an A on Pingdom. On Google, Tildes got a 98 and medium.com got a 48.

      What is probably more concerning is that builtwith.com’s lists 106 different technologies at use on a single Medium page, ranging from AngularJS to Subversion, Wordpress Grid (aren’t they competitors?), Microsoft Azure and AliExpress. Tildes list only 13 technologies.

      Medium is annoying

      I’m sick and tired of opening a random Medium article and being bombarded with an immediate call to action for me to subscribe or to sign into a useless mailing-list. No: I do not pardon the interruption.

      It’s 2019: I don't wanna sign-in just to read a free fucking article.

      Medium weakens your brand

      On Medium, you’re not a content maker. Your a Medium contributor. There’s a great difference. There are little customization options, but you’re encouraged to strengthen the Medium brand instead of your own.

      Medium does not support Markdown

      In 2019, this is utterly ridiculous. I should be able to write my posts in Emacs, Vim, VS Code, whatever. Markdown is a universal format that simply works and not supporting it natively is unacceptable.

      The Default Editor Sucks

      It forces you to write in a certain (clunky) way and it doesn't work at all.

      Too Much White Space

      Medium uses space poorly.

      Not FOSS

      Wanna host your own? No can do amigo.

      Your content is not (really) yours

      Wanna export your Medium posts? Should be easy, like a single button, right? NOPE. And it can stop working at any time.

      Most Content is Shit

      I don’t wanna generalize, there are some good things on Medium. But most Medium articles are bellow 300-words, full of unnecessary subtitles with nothing more than obvious statements I could easily get from Google. Most Medium articles are from developers trying to leverage their status by showing knowledge of trivial technologies.

      What Medium Does Right

      A Social Network With Content Instead of Content With Social Networking

      This is something no amount of Wordpress widgets will ever top. Medium is a social network. It gets views, it gets you β€œapplauses”, it gets you validation. It’s the Instagram of text content. Medium makes you feel good about yourself, and give you the shot (illusion?) of exposure. Maybe you can be in a publication, which is just an assortment of posts within Medium itself! See, you’re growing! You’re reaching a larger audience! They might even read your stuff!

      The Alternative

      It is obvious that Medium does a lot of things right. It is an actual social network that engages people like no other current blogging tool. People that know better use Medium to their advantage. People use Medium to talk trash about Medium. So we need another Medium. One that is just as social, but that is faster, less annoying, less of walled-garden and respects your content. I’m not in a position to do such a thing yet. But I certainly wish it existed.

      35 votes
    11. What is the blogging platform of your dreams?

      Let's fantasise Tilderinoes! You can just write what comes to your mind or answer any of the questions below to get your thoughts flowing. What bothers you in the current blogging platforms, like...

      Let's fantasise Tilderinoes! You can just write what comes to your mind or answer any of the questions below to get your thoughts flowing.

      • What bothers you in the current blogging platforms, like Blogger, Tumblr, or Wordpress?

      • Is it β€œfree” and with ads, commercial with no ads, or free and non-commercial and struggling? If it's commercial, how much does it cost?

      • Does it have comments? How are they moderated? Who can comment? Are there PMs?

      • Does it have tags? Categories? A tree structure?

      • Does it provide file storage (images, audio, video)? How much?

      • How extensible is your blog page? Can you control all of the CSS? Can you add scripting?

      • Does it allow adult content? Political content? Hateful content? Who decides?

      • Does the country of origin matter? Does it block content based on your country's laws (e.g. copyright, political stuff, etc.)?

      • What are the privacy features? Does it require an email address? A card number (if commercial)?

      12 votes