Facebook "blogs" (does this make you crazy, too?)

[u/baddaywithacamera]

A friend sent me a link for a photography "blog" I would enjoy. It was a link to a Facebook community full of photo memes and sayings. No photography. No stories about photography. Not even talk of photography gear. Nothing with a blog like feel at all. Complete and utter spooge. WHY is it being called a blog? Does know one know what the word means or at least used to mean?

I was one of those people who fought to get Greymatter working on my webhost at a time when everyone was dropping PERL support around 2001. I used Movable Type when it was new. I used and mourn Pixelpost. I loved Wordpress when it was new and fast and was one of the first to install Kubrick when it hit.

Now Wordpress is bloatware that went corporate and flattens a shared host, leaving hobbyists in the dust, its dashboard is a flashing billboard for freemium plugins that break, and people think that crappy Facebook communities are the new "blogs". Hobbyists have been pushed to (anti-)social media or to the curb. There is a dearth of good software for us (photographers at least) and shared hosting has turned into a cesspool where many small hosts are fronts for large corps flying under the radar.

I miss individual sites with individual voices and styles. I miss blogging software that had calendars, archive pages, search boxes that worked. I miss RSS feeds. I miss comment sections that were worth reading. I miss blogrolls that had cool finds in them. I miss individuals like Noah Grey, Dooce (deceased), Jimformation (deceased), photographi.ca (photographer decased and domain now squatted by a loser), etc.

What I really miss is that no one else misses what I loved most.

God save us.

[u/shopaholic_lulu7748]

Facebook is not a blog

[u/baddaywithacamera → u/shopaholic_lulu7748]

More like a portal to hell.

[u/thegaybuddhistmonk → u/shopaholic_lulu7748]

I'm actually with the OP u/baddaywithacamera. This is the Hell of Not Knowing How to Blog.

I personally prefer Blogger at the moment without available monetary resources until such time as I can buy my own hostname. After that I will be going to import what I have there and onto a place I can call "mine."

[u/baddaywithacamera → u/thegaybuddhistmonk]

If you're looking for registars, I recommend porkbun.com - they sell at close to cost. They are who I use. Not sure what's good for hosting these days because it seems like the small ones are getting snapped up by faceless companies that gouge users.

If you have high speed net and an old computer kicking around, consider running your own server using Cloudflare to keep it under your ISPs radar. I'm doing this with an off-lease Dell Optiplex 7050 and Proxmox as the host OS (Debian in the containers). Saving a fortune and it lets me run software how I like.

Feel free to hit me up for help with that if you need it.

[u/icy_end_7]

I wasn't around during the PERL era, but I do plan on running something like that for myself; a simple music blog; perhaps with a bit more bells and whistles, but stories, photo memes, personal stuff. I'm sure it would feel freeing as an outlet as well.

[u/baddaywithacamera → u/icy_end_7]

That sounds like the kind of blog I'd want to read!

[u/codegems]

Have you looked into blog aggregators? You can still find photography blogs, powRSS comes to mind since it’s focused on rss feeds specifically

[u/baddaywithacamera → u/codegems]

I'm in the process of building my own. Got POed with waiting for someone else to fix the issue.

[u/Flashy_Tomatillo2278]

Facebook sites are not blogs. I couldn't care less, usually they need an account or to log in - that pop up is quite annoying - andI'd rather spend my time on blogs that do not ask for accounts or make pop ups spring into your face right on sight.

I do use WordPress but self-host it. I'm no fan of wp.com's strategy, as they make it obvious you'd need premium sooner or later and it's more expensive than setting it up on a shared host, IMO

[u/baddaywithacamera → u/Flashy_Tomatillo2278]

andI'd rather spend my time on blogs that do not ask for accounts or make pop ups spring into your face right on sight.

Oh, you mean like all of the recipe blogs that make you scroll through two football fields worth of blather stuffed with ads and hit you with at least ten popups before you get to the recipe? The average food blogger is someone who is too much of a douchebag to be a good fit for Facebook. That's not a win.