Blog Questions Challenge
I’ve been tagged in a good ol’-fashioned memetic chain letter, first by Jon and then by Luke. Only by answering these questions can my soul find peace…
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
All the cool kids were doing it. I distinctly remember thinking it was far too late to start blogging. Clearly I had missed the boat. That was in the year 2001.
So if you’re ever thinking of starting something but you think it might be too late …it isn’t.
Back then, I wrote:
I’ll try and post fairly regularly but I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep.
I’m glad I didn’t commit myself but I’m also glad that I’m still posting 24 years later.
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?
I use my own hand-cobbled mix of PHP and MySQL. Before that I had my own hand-cobbled mix of PHP and static XML files.
On the one hand, I wouldn’t recommend anybody to do what I’ve done. Just use an off-the-shelf content management system and start publishing.
On the other hand, the code is still working fine decades later (with the occasional tweak) and the control freak in me likes knowing what every single line of code is doing.
It’s very bare-bones though.
How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?
I usually open a Mardown text editor and write in that. I use the Mac app Focused which was made by Realmac software. I don’t think you can even get hold of it these days, but it does the job for me. Any Markdown text editor would do though.
Then I copy what I’ve written and paste it into the textarea of my hand-cobbled CMS. It’s pretty rare for me to write directly into that textarea.
When do you feel most inspired to write?
When I’m supposed to be doing something else.
Blogging is the greatest procrastination tool there is. You’re skiving off doing the thing you should be doing, but then when you’ve published the blog post, you’ve actually done something constructive so you don’t feel too bad about avoiding that thing you were supposed to be doing.
Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to posting something. I find myself blogging out loud to my friends, which is a sure sign that I need to sit down and bash out that blog post.
When there’s something I’m itching to write about but I haven’t ’round to it yet, it feels a bit like being constipated. Then, when I finally do publish that blog post, it feels like having a very satisfying bowel movement.
No doubt it reads like that too.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
I publish immediately. I’ve never kept drafts. Usually I don’t even save theMarkdown file while I’m writing—I open up the text editor, write the words, copy them, paste them into that textarea and publish it. Often it takes me longer to think of a title than it takes to write the actual post.
I try to remind myself to read it through once to catch any typos, but sometimes I don’t even do that. And you know what? That’s okay. It’s the web. I can go back and edit it at any time. Besides, if I miss a typo, someone else will catch it and let me know.
Speaking for myself, putting something into a draft (or even just putting it on a to-do list) is a guarantee that it’ll never get published. So I just write and publish. It works for me, though I totally understand that it’s not for everyone.
What’s your favourite post on your blog?
I’ve got a little section of “recommended reading” in the sidebar of my journal:
But I’m not sure I could pick just one.
I’m very proud of the time I wrote 100 posts in 100 days and each post was exactly 100 words long. That might be my favourite tag.
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
I like making little incremental changes. Usually this happens at Indie Web Camps. I add some little feature or tweak.
I definitely won’t be redesigning. But I might add another “skin” or two. I’ve got one of those theme-switcher things, y’see. It was like a little CSS Zen Garden before that existed. I quite like having redesigns that are cumulative instead of destructive.
Next?
You. Yes, you.