Weblog. Remember that word? It’s a bit old, at least in internet terms. It used to refer to a place where one would write their thoughts, opinions, or share informative articles on their specialty. Eventually it shortened to “blog”, and then Twitter came along and many people forgot about it entirely. This site is here to bring it back, even if it’s just for myself.
I’m going to share a bit of my process (okay, I like to talk about process a fair bit, as a warning) and how I put the site together. These are the notes and lists I wrote when I sat down and thought through how this was all going to work.
WebLOG
A place for logging things in my life. I’ve been thinking about this idea for the last couple of weeks. As I pull back a bit from social media, I find myself wanting to write more and also wanting to consolidate that writing someplace where it’s not subject to the whims of advertisers. I started my first blog in 2002, so this concept feels a bit like coming home again.
Why?
For myself: So I can go back over the year and see what I read, watched, thought, learned, etc.
For others: So someone else may find some use for the things I’ve uncovered.
Consolidating myself to one place, leveraging IndieWeb technology for sending my writings elsewhere.
Places I already post my stuff
- My commonplace books (Bear Writer, Boostnote)
- Newsletters (commonplacebook, cool shit)
- Mastodon
- Tumblr
- Pinboard
- 8tracks
- My developer blog
- Dev.to
- Medium
This weblog idea transforms the point of origin for most of that stuff to a single place that’s under my control, disseminating it elsewhere as desired.
Logistics
Where to host? I have a few domain names, so which one makes the most sense? pixelpaperyarn.rocks works. I didn’t have anything else going on here of note.
CMS of choice: WordPress! With IndieWeb-oriented plugins plus a syntax formatter for my code-related posts. This is as low friction as I can get and it allows me to post from anywhere. I’m going with the nice, built-in TwentyFifteen theme.
DEFAULTS ARE GOOD ENOUGH TO GET STARTED!!!
What am I posting here?
Make this a website of me and my stuff
- Newsletters get written here and then sent out through Tinyletter
- Medium and dev blog posts start here and get copied over
- Pinboard records my reading and goes over to Evernote so I can grab it weekly as a post here
- Editor’s Ephemera and my editorials for LSQ will be ported here
- Current comic book subscription list
- Movies I watch
- Video games I’m playing
- Books I’m reading