Blogging
So, as we now have three main ways for subscribing to a blog/publication; email newsletter, RSS and ActivityPub (handle), which will win? Some blogs even add a fourth way: Subscribing via WhatsApp / Telegram / Etc. Will RSS and ActivityPub subscribing continue being marginal use case and email still rules? I have no idea, but I think about this a lot.
I feel ActivityPub (especially in it’s current form) has a bit similar problem that RSS does, non-techical users just don’t use them for subscribing. It’s been all about newsletters for so long, that not sure if that mental model will change easily.
As a blogger, do you intend to support several different ways of subscribing (to your blog)? Or, do you plan to just promote one primary way of subscribing and maybe offer the other ways of subscribing in “the fine details”?
Back from the holidays, more website tinkering ensues!
Right before heading to summer holidays in June, I launched a new version of this website.
During the holiday, I didn’t do much else than enjoy the vacation views & feels and post some stories and photos on Instagram from the trip. Didn’t even bring my laptop with me, holiday well spent!
Having said that, I feel excited to get back to tinkering with this blog again. Unlike social media channels where you have limited options on “making it yours”, on personal websites, the sky is the limit. It’s fun being able to make this thing whatever I want it to be.
Oh, where did we travel?
In addition to travels in Finland (where I’m from), we went to Northern Italy, near a city called Bolzano and from there, continued to Santorini, Greece. First mountain views with nice 20-25 Celsius weather, then full on sunshine, 30 Celsius and those beautiful Santorini views. It was great and I miss those places already!
Ok, but about that blog / website tinkering topic. Here’s what’s been happening.
Papa's got a brand new blog
Well, I did it again. Started a new blog, that is.
Oh wait, that’s not entirely true. It ain’t new, as I’ve used it on and off for micro blogging. But I haven’t used it for longer posts like this one. Oh, and it has fresh coat of paint too!
The site runs on micro.blog, a blogging platform that also has elements of social networking built in. In addition to the micro.blog community itself, it also connects with Fediverse. And you can easily cross-publish to other social networks, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Medium and more.
It’s neat, do check it out.
Now that I’ve moved around some “furniture”, this place feels more like home. There are few things I’d like to mention about the “making of” this site.
Does anyone run their micro.blog in some other language than English? I’m considering creating another micro.blog which I’d use for Finnish content specifically. There are cases where blogging in my native language would make sense (and sharing those post to social channels which I use in Finnish). Would be cool to hear some experiences if some of you’ve done something similar! :)
After a brief sidetracking on WordPress, I switched my blogging efforts back to micro.blog. WP was fine (it always is), but the ease of publishing via micro.blog just felt like a better road to take right now. Let’s see how this goes! :)
I’ve been mulling over the thought of building and selling a few website / blogging themes this year. Just not 100% decided on to which “platform”. Probably Ghost or Eleventy, or why not a micro.blog theme even? WordPress could be too, but the latest full site editing / block theme stuff feels like there’s too many moving parts to take into account. Would want to keep things as simple as possible.
Don’t recall if I’ve seen commercial Eleventy themes before though. So Ghost then.. perhaps? At least Ghost has a theme marketplace.
Just thinking out loud here I guess. Let’s see what I manage to cook up (if anything at all)! :)