I Quit Traditional Blogging Today

Today I just didn’t pay the bill for my web server. I don’t care about it anymore. It’s a hard concept for an old-timer to realize, but blogging on your own platform just isn’t worth the cost. When I started blogging, it wasn’t even called blogging. I learned HTML to code the pages. The future seemed limitless, but soon we learned that the limits are set by search engines.

The idea of publishing your own articles and interacting with those who read them was very exciting. Learning to code for the web was interesting. The progression into systems like WordPress kept making it more interesting. People were enticed with the idea. Some were fearful. The idea of putting your personal information “on the web” started to be something to warn everyone about.

Then came Facebook. The college generation got it going and soon most were using. Now it’s a point of suspicion if you’re not using social media. In my opinion, Facebook was the death of what I thought blogging would be. The majority traded their ownership of content for ease of use. Facebook now decides the fate of any material people post.

I kept the dream going with my blogs for a long time. Eventually I lost interest in constantly updating the pages for Search Engine Optimization. I also turned off the comments that were spammed with thousands of entries. Constant updates were required for Wordpress. The updates often broke the website causing hours of troubleshooting. The popularity of the blogs waned as Google killed it’s RSS reader so many had come to love.

My dream of the fun of blogging on my own platform died when I realized that ownership doesn’t mean anything if the site is not visited and cannot maintain interaction. For these things, a platform with a community and better managed software is probably best. The best bloggers/vloggers use many platforms and the website is more of a secondary piece.

The experience over so many years was no loss. I have a habit of daily writing. I still own the content. The skills gained still have use. The core motive of communication is better with less emphasis on managing the technical chores of maintaining a website. At some point, I may even learn how to turn a profit.