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Replying to
Back when I used shared-server ISP (Dreamhost), they were pressing me to upgrade to a “personal server” (a VM basically). I saw that as a sign they’d eventually either charge for admin services or force you to admin a VM. Which is what you’d do today (likely on Digital Ocean)
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For those who’ve never run a serious site, this is the equivalent of having to self-checkout and bag your own groceries. Instead of just doing light admin on the specific website software, you’d do heavier admin: server OS upgrades, web server configuration etc. Not fun.
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So I sucked it up and moved to a 10x costlier solution in 2014. Instead of a $10/mo shared server, I ended up on a $100/mo managed WPengine account. Usually, I end up with $50-150/mo in overage charges since our traffic is above the band we’re in but not yet at next level
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Today the “self-hosted” alternative for ribbonfarm would probably be a $20/mo Digital Ocean droplet with 10x the admin time and knowledge than I needed to run things on Dreamhost in 2012. Basically out of the question. Cloudy app-level managed Wordpress is the only game in town.
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For a new blogger with no tech skills, I don’t think self-hosted Wordpress is an option at all. As an engineer, but not a s/w engineer, I at least had basic Unix shell and PHP scripting skills, and understood the basics of server-side infrastructure, enough for 2007 indie ops.
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Quite unsurprisingly many new, non-techie bloggers don’t even understand what self-hosted means. They don’t know there’s an open-source project behind Wordpress.com (a private platform run by Automattic, a private company) or what it means to run your own “copy”.
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It’s as bizarre-sounding to them as “running my own google or Facebook”. Their mental model of blogging is *communatarian by default* lacking even awareness of the individualist option, let alone seeing brave digital homesteading as the default, like we did 10 years ago.
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This has implications. It means only the more social/civilized type of writer, willing to *start* on a shared private community/aggregator environment like Medium or Wordpress.com, will get into blogging. Wild West pioneer-settler era is over. The townies are moving in.
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If I were starting out today instead of 2007, I’d probably not pick Wordpress or Medium. I’d probably have given up on the idea of writing in public altogether and my life would have taken a more traditional engineering career path. I just don’t enjoy townie-mode writing.
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Replying to
in this same vein, by the way, are we saying that domains are dead? Half killed by these ridiculous new TLDs that have opened up and gobbled by tech giants - .blog, .bot, .google. Other half by peeps who wouldn’t know what to do with it if a domain hit them over the head.
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Replying to
Oh. Wow, yeah… That’s an obnoxious bunch. Fair though that in their minds they’re right because they don’t know the alternative. I see your point about how folks starting now would have no idea where to go and how to start. It’s like whenever I think about getting into the 1/2
Replying to
indieweb, I realize that there’s too much cruft and that I don’t want to abandon WordPress’ basics or experiment with my default install. Same with someone even less technical - “if I can post on Medium, why would I run my own web server? That’s cray!”