Showing all posts about blogs
Reasons to leave Substack, how to leave Substack
5 August 2025
The question is — before giving any thought to some of the objectionable content they host — what are you doing there in the first place? Why would you allow your brand to be assimilated by another?
American economist Paul Krugman’s decision to set up shop on Substack, after he stopped writing for The New York Times, plain baffles me. With a profile as impressive as his, Krugman could just as easily started publishing from his own website, with a ready made audience.
He didn’t need to go to a third party publishing platform. Certainly Substack publishes writer’s posts as email newsletters, but if someone wants to syndicate their work by newsletter, there are other options. Writers can earn money through Substack, some do very well apparently, but high profile writers have a number of ways of generating revenue through their own, self-hosted, websites.
You Should Probably Leave Substack goes through some of the options available to writers who want to leave Substack (and preferably publish from their own website).
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blogs, publishing, self publishing, trends, writing
Had a website since the 90’s? You’re an internet person
4 August 2025
Kris Howard writing at Web Goddess:
I’m not sure if this is a generational thing, or just different cultures and social norms. Rodd’s theory is that we are Internet People — those who grew up with the dawn of the modern Internet and have strong feelings about keeping information free and decentralised — and that not everyone working in tech is an Internet Person.
The excerpt is from a post Kris wrote marking her tenth anniversary using WordPress, although she’s been online far longer. But I like the positive context in which the term internet person is used.
Because usage is not always complimentary. But people who have had a website since the turn of the century, or prior, can adopt this term, own it.
An internet person’s values are of course similar to indie web principles. While in some senses I am considered part of the indie web, I don’t always feel that way, given I somewhat predate the movement. Internet person it is then.
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blogs, history, IndieWeb, trends
Personal websites are the place for comments, not social media channels
22 July 2025
Ava, writing at Ava’s blog:
It’s a bit of a meh look that one of the biggest Indieweb personalities (that I think does an amazing job!) with her own Bearblog and website is not sharing this discussion on them, but on social media instead, limiting its reach to those users. At least POSSE was an option. And that leads me back to what I said above — what’s the point of going here if people are also resorting to Twitter but with different look, but without the numbers and archive built up over years?
Ava’s post is in response to a question posed by xandra, asking what the Indie Web needs the most now. But the matter of hosting discussions with blog posts is something I’ve been grappling with.
It doesn’t seem right that anyone reading one of my website posts has to go elsewhere to make a comment, when that should be happening right here. Because I was thinking, why do I need multiple social media pages, so that all bases are covered should someone not be on this social, but on that social? And what if a person wishing to comment on a post doesn’t have any Fediverse presence?
After years of having post comments switched off, I recently re-enabled them. The reply-guys and spammers arrived within minutes of course, but my CMS has tools to help filter a lot of this junk out. Plus, I still approve all comments before they go public. Bringing comments back achieved two aims, in theory. For one, all discussion is centralised (mostly) on my website, and not spread across multiple social media platforms.
Two: people who don’t have social media presences can still take part in any discussion, because all they have to do is type out a comment. No membership of anything, expect an email address, is needed. Yes, that sets the bar low for junk, but in filters I trust.
One of the things I enjoy about leaving a comment on other people’s posts — though I’m hardly a prolific commenter, because overworked introvert — is including my website on the reply form, where the option is available.
To my mind, it’s always been about the website, not some “outpost” page on a social media platform. I’m not saying everyone should shun social media, because it’s a great place for chit-chat, and having conversations that are only hosted on someone’s socials page.
Of course, to somewhat contradict my argument, I recently federated disassociated, meaning posts go out to the likes of Mastodon, and people can reply there if they want. But then again, those comments ping back to the post in question, so any discussion would be seen in full here.
POSSE is great, but when it comes to discussion on blog posts, let’s also remember KISS: Keep It Simple Sayang. Yes, sayang, because I don’t like calling smart people stupid.
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blogs, IndieWeb, Small Web, trends
The near demise, and comeback, of Medium, an online publishing platform
17 July 2025
Tony Stubblebine, CEO of online publishing platform Medium, writing at Medium:
I’m gonna write the wonky post of Medium’s turnaround. I’m not sure if a company is allowed to be this blunt about how bad things were. But it’s very much of the Medium ethos that if something interesting happened to you, then you should write it up and share it. So hopefully this will give some inside info about what happens to a startup in distress, and one way to approach a financial, brand, product, and community turnaround.
Like many online writers I signed up for Medium — which is similar to Substack — a couple of years after its 2012 founding. A few people I knew were publishing there, and I was curious to see what it was about. I’m yet to post anything though.
But Stubblebine’s account of Medium’s ups and downs is, at times, astonishing. Particularly the amounts of money, both as investments, and in debt, that are involved. Of course, there will be plenty of people who’ll call those sums a pittance, but speaking as a boot-strapping independent online publisher, they are incredible.
The lure of publishing your work on a platform such as Medium, lies in the opportunity to be paid for it. And no doubt, some writers posting on Medium do well.
For my part, the prospect of publishing there (or on similar platforms) is tempting, but doing so just isn’t in my DNA. I’ve never liked the idea of assimilating my brand into someone else’s, something I’ve said before. Anything you do on a third-party publishing platform is doable on your own website/blog, if you are prepared to persevere.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t ever post there, and for someone like me, a platform such as Medium might be comparable to a social media channel.
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blogs, publishing, self publishing, trends, writing
IndieWeb is Punk, you have the blog, now here is the t-shirt
25 June 2025
Jamie Thingelstad recently suggested IndieWeb is to the web of today, what punk rock was to music of the 1970’s. IndieWeb is Punk, he said.
In a comment on Thingelstad’s post, Robert Birming said the slogan would look good on a t-shirt.
Not long after, Jim Mitchell unveiled a line — one black, one white — of t-shirts emblazoned with the words IndieWeb is Punk, which are available for purchase.
Never mind the bollocks, here’s the bloggers…
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blogs, design, IndieWeb, SmallWeb
Indie Web, Small Web, and now Sovereign Web?
11 June 2025
Aevisia writing at the Sovereign Web:
The truth is, I’ve had some difficult experiences with parts of those communities. At times, I’ve felt excluded or harshly judged simply for choosing a different path or expressing my creativity in ways that some consider unconventional or even controversial.
I linked to Aevisia’s Small Web Movement project in March. If Indie Web and Small Web are spaces that belong to everyone, I don’t see how one person can tell another they’re not welcome. Someone told me a while back I wasn’t doing Indie Web right. In their opinion. I gave their email due consideration, then flicked it away.
But I’ve had comments like that all the way through the time I’ve had disassociated. I’ve not been doing something or other right, according to someone or other. But the answer there, I find, is to keep on doing what you’re doing.
Unless say plagiarism, something deeply inappropriate, or the illegal, is involved, no one can tell you, the creator, that you’re doing something wrong and don’t belong. All criticism of that nature means is someone doesn’t like what you do, not that it’s wrong.
No doubt I’ve been excluded in some corners too, but that’s the way things go. And no doubt I’ve excluded others in some fashion, at some time, but I’ve seldom been directly critical of what anyone has been doing.
If starting another movement, Sovereign Web, is the solution, then I don’t have a problem with that. But everyone’s paths, and their expressions of creativity, are different. I think the response is not to worry about the opinions of other people, and stay on your course.
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blogs, IndieWeb, self publishing, Small Web
Claude fails to explain the abrupt disappearance of their blog
10 June 2025
AI assistant Claude must have had one of the shortest blogging stints ever seen in the blogosphere. Just days after announcing Claude’s debut as a blogger — albeit with “human oversight” — Anthropic, Claude’s creator, almost immediately shuttered the publication. The URL for the blog presently redirects to Anthropic’s main website.
We can only speculate as to why the plug was pulled on the venture, but I was looking forward to reading some of Claude’s output. This preferably with a minimum of human oversight, as I was curious to see how well an AI assistant could write by themselves. Anthropic’s move could possibly be seen to suggest they weren’t too confident in Claude’s blogging abilities though.
It’s good news for human self-publishers: we live to blog for another day. Or two.
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artificial intelligence, blogs, self publishing, technology
Happy twentieth birthday to swissmiss, the blog of Tina Roth Eisenberg
29 May 2025
swissmiss went live on 27 May 2005. Twenty years is a long time. Congratulations.
That was Tina v1.0; No kids, single, hadn’t started any businesses yet. This blog opened doors. Forever grateful.
Blogs open doors, still, even today. disassociated was opening doors for me way back in 2010:
If you’re onto a good thing you’ll be doing far more than merely writing and posting articles.
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disassociated is listed in the Internet Phone Book: call me on 492
19 May 2025
Image courtesy of Ana Šantl.
disassociated has been included in the inaugural edition of the Internet Phone Book, a directory of over seven-hundred personal websites and blogs, compiled by Kristoffer Tjalve, and Elliott Cost.
An annual publication for exploring the vast poetic web, featuring essays, musings and a directory with the personal websites of hundreds of designers, developers, writers, curators, and educators.
You don’t read a great deal of poetry on my website, but Tjalve and Cost offer a definition of poetic in this interview with Meg Miller of Are.na, publishers of the book.
Being a phone directory, each listed website naturally comes with a “phone number”, a three digit code allocated by the authors, a kind of short-cut link, that lets you “call” through, I’m on 492.
As of the time I type, the book has sold out through the publisher’s website (I think another print is in the works), though it is available from selected stockists across Europe, and in South Korea.
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Ye Olde Blogroll is sporting a swish new design
18 April 2025
Check it out. In addition, Ray, creator of the algorithm-free web directory of personal websites and blogs, which lists this website (thanks again), has transferred ownership to Manuel Moreale, he of People and Blogs fame, among other things.
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