keith is
đź’Ś curating

You should blog

feature writing blogging

I’m going into 2024 wanting to write more. Link to more of my favorite parts of the internet. Become a curator again.

Some advice if you’re starting a blog for the first time (or it’s been awhile):

  1. Share your thoughts on whatever. You’re a blogger, not an opinion columnist in the washington post.
  2. Change your mind! Write about why you changed your mind!
  3. Write however you want. Run-on sentences. Weird grammar. Write in limericks, sonnets, or haikus – defy the grammar cops.

Don’t know where to get started? Don’t have the ability to write your own blog software (don’t do it!) or self host wordpress? Here are some options to get started today, including a few options with free plans:

  • write.as: Has a free version (that includes all of the write.as branding). For $6/m you can use a personal domain and get access to lots of great functionality.
  • omg.lol: This is a hard one to explain, you get a lot more than just a blog. You get a link-tree esque page, a blog, and an account on their mastodon instance. It’s $20 a year (no monthly plan). They’ve also got an IRC server as a perk??? The social aspect seems to be the seller, tbh.
  • micro.blog $5/m, with cross posting to all of the social networks. I’ve seen people use it more for microblogging (twitter-esque) updates, or curating links, but I think you can use it for long form.
  • NEOCITIES: Obviously I’m a sucker for a nostalgia play. I look at the top sites pretty often to see things like web pets still being made.
  • Ghost: $11/m for a very powerful open source platform. I remember when Ghost launched 1.0, there was a noticeable shift in the number of non-WP blogs running on the internet. It’s since matured and has a large plugin/theme ecosystem.
  • Pika: Free! Very, very simple, no themes, but you get a page and can write on it.
  • Glitch: A shameless plug for 🎏 Glitch, but you can start an eleventy blog for free on Glitch, and it gets built and deployed as a static site. You can add a custom domain if you’ve got one. The perfect middle ground of building your own, and letting some one else take care of the deployments.

If you do end up starting a blog, or picking up something you left off 7 years ago - send me the URL so I can subscribe đź’–