Writing on the web

Here’s a crazy idea: threaded tweets, but logged together, on a single webpage. A ‘weblog’, if you will.

— Paul Lloyd (@paulrobertlloyd) March 21, 2017

Some people have been putting Paul’s crazy idea into practice.

• Mike revived his site a while back and he’s been posting gold dust ever since. I enjoy his no-holds-barred perspective on his time in San Francisco.
• Garrett’s writing goes all the way back to 2005. The cumulative result is two fascinating interweaving narratives—one about his health, another about his business.
• Charlotte has been documenting her move from Brighton to Sydney. Much as I love her articles about front-end development, I’m liking the slice-of-life updates on life down under even more.
• Amber has a great way with words. As well as regularly writing on her blog, she’s two-thirds of the way through writing 100 words every day for 100 days.
• Ethan has been writing about responsive design—of course—but it’s his more personal posts that make me really grateful for his site.
• Jeffrey and Eric never stopped writing on their own sites. Sure, there’s good stuff on their about web design and development, but it’s the writing about their non-web lives that’s so powerful.

There are more people I could mention …but, to be honest, not that many more. Seems like most people are happy to only publish on Ev’s blog or not at all.

I know not everybody wants to write on the web, and that’s fine. But it makes me sad when people choose not to publish their thoughts because they think no-one will be interested, or that it’s all been said before. I understand where those worries come from, but I believe—no, I know—that they are unfounded.

It’s a world wide web out there. There’s plenty of room for everyone. And I, for one, love reading the words of others.

Blogs and longevity | James’ Coffee Blog

When I write a blog post, I want it to live on my blog, rather than a platform. I can thus invest my time thinking about how to make my blog better and backing it up, rather than having to worry about where my writing is, finding ways to export data from a platform, setting up persistent backups, etc.

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More Thoughtful Reading & Writing on the Web - Tantek

The combination of taking more time (as longer form writing encourages) and publishing on a domain associated with your name, your identity, enables & incentivizes more thoughtful writing. More thoughtful writing elevates the reader to a more thoughtful state of mind.

The Year of the Personal Website · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer

Especially if you are a designer, an artist, a photographer, a writer, a blogger, a creator of any kind, owning your work is as important as ever. Social media platforms might be great for distributing your content and creating a network of like-minded people around you. But they will always be ephemeral, transient, and impermanent – not the best place to preserve your thoughts, words, and brushstrokes.

(Almost) no one cares

Every time I’ve thought “this is a niche subject or random thought, no one will be interested but I’ll publish anyway” someone will let me know that it was the EXACT train of thought they were thinking or thing they were looking for.