I’ve had my own website for a very long time. If I remember correctly, I’d originally set-up on Geocities before getting my own hosting service. You had to hand roll HTML back in those days. Well, it was the 90’s. Some of us were crazy enough to run our own mail servers back then.
The web then got very siloed with the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. It was easier to post content without having to maintain a site. Blogs started to die off. People started to get too busy with work, families and life. More people got online, as it was easier to do.
It was okay. For a while.
We’ve now entered another age. I don’t know what it’ll be called but I refererence Doctorow here with the word ‘Enshittification‘ as that feels appropriate.
Privacy and security of your data is one thing – but the way some of the functionality, and owners, are evolving it seems like it’s a good idea to get to know the open web again.
My goodness, WordPress has changed a lot and I’m not sure its for the better. But I’m probably just an older man shaking his fist at the clouds (I remember the move from b2/cafelog). Probably also why I’m using a thirteen old theme to start with.
So I’m trying to resurrect this place. I haven’t been on Facebook for years. I’m no longer on Instagram or Twitter. I am on Mastodon. But it feels right that I have my own thing somewhere again. It’ll probably be messy for a while. I remember having a full local working copy of my site which I made changes on – then uploaded everything. The very correct way of doing things. To be honest I thought about it briefly and thought ‘No, live changes will do for now’.