new blog, who dis?
I finally converted my old blog, weaselhat.com to a static site. I ran on Wordpress for years, but I switched to a static site for a variety of reasons:
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dynamic websites are less secure and more expensive to run
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static sites run on markdown, which I can write in my editor of choice
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static sites let me compose offline
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static sites let me understand more of the technology stack I'm using
No more Wordpress
I've used Wordpress for more than 15 years; I maintained a plugin, PHPEnkoder, for most of that time. Moving away from Wordpress means ending development on PHPEnkoder. Since I no longer run a Wordpress installation, there's no good way for me to test things without a great deal of trouble... and the plugin directory was insisting that I make a bunch of changes due to a lapse in email connectivity. (A reasonable perspective for supply-chain security!) But I give up. We had a good run. I shut it down over the summer.
My feelings are mixed. The underlying technology in Wordpress---PHP; a complete morass of hooks and filters---is an utter mess. My blog generated a badly malformed RSS feed! But I find it truly remarkable that I wrote PHPEnkoder for Wordpress 2.3 back in 2006, and I never had to make significant changes to keep it up to date as versions progressed.
No more Twitter
I've barely been using my Twitter account, as it is quite a hellhole at this point. (The porn spam seems to have gone down a bit, but it feels like a ghost town.) I don't know of a broad social media site that meets my two criteria: (a) has everyone I want to talk to, and (b) I can block the ads (looking at you, Instagram). I hope folks will engage here. Alternatively, I'm on Discord as mgreenbe.
Is there still room for independent social media? Or is blogging purely an act of Millenial nostalgia?
More posting?
The static site lowers the bar for posting, so I'm hopeful to write more.