Blogs and longevity
Published on under the IndieWeb category.
I spend a lot of time writing. For every place I put my writing, there is a maintenance cost: if I post something on a website, I need to maintain that, if I post something on social media, I need to maintain it.
I recently noted the following in the IndieWeb chat:
As time has passed, I have found I want more things on my website because I know that if they are there, I have fewer things to maintain. With every passing year, I have more confidence that my website is the safest place for my writing.“
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.
I publish long-form thoughts on my blog first, then link to those posts elsewhere (i.e. Mastodon, or directly in communities) so people can find them.
I keep multiple copies of my blog, in case something happens and my site breaks. With a saved copy of my writing on my computer and on a backup drive, I know that if my website breaks for any reason, I still have my words and can bring everything back. Every additional place I publish original content adds to this burden.