Begin Again

I'm not sure how well this will work out, this experimental next phase for my website and blog. This is the first time in a very long time that I've decided to return to an entirely manual blog. In a way it feels like returning home. My first websites were built back in the late 90s. Good times! I built Liberated Existence as the online version of our neighborhood resource center in late 1990s Memphis. That website was, without a doubt, a labor of love. I spent countless hours updating it with new pages, new sub-sites, companion sites and new updates daily. I lived and breathed html and poured it all into that site. I mean look at the full glory of a 1990s anarchist website:

So, here I am, 26+ years later giving it a go again. I've deleted my WordPress installation though I still have my micro dot blog account with the full archive there. I'll be keeping that for a long time. I may or may not continue posting there. But all new posts will be published here first.

There is no one specific reason I made the move. More than anything I've just felt a kind of confinement over there. I've written several times that while I like Micro.Blog as a blogging host I was feeling trapped by the complexity of yet another blog assembly machine. It's based on the currently very popular static site generator Hugo for the building and publishing of the blogs. For non-technical folks that want a plug-and play blog it's an excellent choice. Sign-up and start blogging. When I moved over there I just wanted escape from the monstrosity that is WordPress. And while the posting process at Micro.blog is faster due to its more limited, straightforward markdown editor, it's still, at the end of the day, a template-based blog builder extended by plugins.

I'm not finding myself satisfied with the experience. I do most of my writing locally via a mix of Textastic and iA Writer so that's fully under my control. But once it's sent to micro.blog a post is put into a relatively small composition window that feels more like a database text entry box than a nice, open page for writing or editing. It feels designed for writing small posts which I suspect has it's origins in micro.blog as a micro posting service rather than as a place to comfortably write.

So, now I'm going for full control of the experience of writing, posting and, equally important, the option to design the site fully as I see fit. From the css to the structure of my pages, it's entirely free form. This is not a blog, it is a website. And yes, it's likely that the blog will be my focus but I can do whatever it is I want with any aspect of it and I expect to experiment with a few things.

And, gloriously, when I post to this site, I'll not be tapping a button to initiate a blog build but rather I'll be uploading a new html file, possibly one or more images and then I'll be adding a line of code to link to the new post and then I'll be uploading a new version of the Posts page with the new post. I'll even be updating an RSS file by hand and uploading that. It's not that hard. None of it is really that difficult or time consuming.

And that reminds me of a last point. I'm not in a hurry because I enjoy this. I keep a blog and a website because I love the internet and publishing on the internet. Love it. I will never forget the first days of learning html from an acquaintance (Thanks Marvin!) at the university computer lab. And then the excitement of uploading a file via Fetch or Cyberduck and seeing it live in a browser where anyone could see it. No one did but me but it still seemed amazing. It was amazing.

So, this is why I'm starting over again. I'm less interested in posting status updates to a social feed and more interested in creating my tiny corner of the internet.