Why Have Your Website

I’m saying this repeatedly: have your own website and domain. Platforms come and go. I have experienced it myself with Medium, WordPress, and inspired by Why does every personal website look like this now?, I wrote:

Please create your own website. Don’t give away all your content to social media. That was always my philosophy; therefore, my website has a lot of content. I created knowledge for myself, not for other huge companies.

Eric does a fantastic job explaining the Second Brain mantra and what Derek Sivers is doing so well (check Tech Independence), and he adds all his content to his website. He also mentioned Luke Smith’s website and Jared White’s.

If you like this, also check out Other Public Second Brains, where people share their second brains and, therefore, their wealth of knowledge. I think it’s the Future of Blogging.

Essentially, don’t build your castle in other people’s kingdoms, and try to write long-term.

I would NOT. I started with LinkedIn Articles, then there was Medium (Luckily, I already uploaded it from my blog), and now there is Substack (very hyped), and many more (Open Subscription Platforms). So what is next?

Every time you need to migrate over (if not, what a pity for all the content and hard work!). I have had my website since 2007 (many iterations since then), and I enjoy the process and owning everything myself.

And isn’t going on someone else’s website like exploring their unique personality? I love that most when I read on someone else’s website, and not the same template as the other hundreds of Substacks.

But I’m hoping people realize this and build their own websites again. Sure, it’s also hard work, but it will pay off, and migration and optimization across other platforms take time.

I have lots of thoughts, too, on why Substack or other Open Subscription Platforms.

I recommend never betting on a single platform. The best you can do is like Tim Ferriss already said 15 years (20?) back, build your own newsletter. One day, Substack will be gone, so it’s good to have your blog IMO, or if not, at least your own domain - which Substack lets you do. Also, Substack is great. If it’s going away one day, like Medium, and many other platforms have before. At least you have full control over your subscribers and can potentially export content.

What I find sad is that if you put a lot of effort into writing a blog, it dies with the platform. So always have a plan to export valuable content if you move on. What do you all think about that aspect?

My plan is to lead people on any social platform to My Websites. I don’t care so much about any social media platform or its metrics - it’s just a Vanity Metric anyway. I love writing, so I hope to write the best possible I can. But then, I also like that people at least get a chance to read it, and nowadays it seems you almost need to share it somewhere.

Oh, and yes, Markdown is the real winner, at least for the writer (the reader doesn’t care so much, although with AI and when you copy text from Markdown-based pages, it’s just clean and works great), as you don’t need to fiddle with formatting any time anymore. Plus, you can just have it offline, and because it’s tiny, everywhere.

I love Obsidian for its connected linking, which gives me many new ideas I wouldn’t otherwise have. But yeah, it’s also not for everyone. If you do start, I’d use the paid Obsidian Sync, as it makes it seamless to work on the phone, desktop, and anywhere.

Also, why I use Obsidian, it’s VS Code, but for text. And I can use Vim Motions (nerdy, I know), but I’d argue that vim motions (not vim) is the best way to manipulate text, period.

Beautiful Websites

The best approach, in my opinion, is to use a Static Site Generator (SSG), which generates your website in simple HTML. This is super fast for viewers, and you can write simple Markdown, while still having the option to style or add features as you want.

There is also a movement toward plain HTML sites; this is what Derek Sivers has been doing for years on his website, with a little PostgreSQL Stored Procedure for comments. The The Brutalist Network is another website that went full HTML. They call it the Small Web; e.g., The small web is beautiful is a longer-form explanation of this.

I wrote a deep dive into self-hosting and tech independence that also circles around owning your domain and website. Check it out at Self-Host & Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own.

I also wrote about Why I Still Blog — and Why the Future of Blogging Is Connected.

List:

• Personal Websites
• Personal Blogs
• Future of Blogging
• My approach to running a link blog
• On 10 Years of Writing a Blog Nobody Reads | flow2
• Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax
• Open Web and Open Social with protocols such as AT Protocol for the win.

Origin: Why does every personal website look like this now? - YouTube