

You Should Start a Blog - timkastelle
http://timkastelle.org/blog/2014/03/you-should-start-a-blog-right-now/

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devindotcom
> Blogs were invented to teach. _The mission of blogging is to empower all of
> us to go directly to each other with our expertise._

>Blogging helps you turn your flow of ideas into a stock of content.

>You create opportunities. I’ve met a ton of cool people through my blog.

>Finally, blogging helps you build your skills. Remember, the big gap is the
one between doing nothing and doing something, not the one between lousy work
and great work.

Although I recognize this very positive post is not intended in this way, this
ends up seeming to me at heart a rather cynically narrow definition of
blogging, one that has little to do with self-expression and sharing and a lot
to do with making an investment in a work-related product that will make you
more effective and marketable.

I don't disagree that you should start a blog right now. But starting it for
the reasons listed in this post is only one way out of many, and if you ask me
a sort of outlet for workaholism.

~~~
flud43
Deep.

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intull
In my an elective at my college, we had to create blogs for our projects. My
professor insisted on that for one main reason - "You think once when you
develop. You think twice before presenting it. But you think thrice when you
put it down in a blog".

When I had to blog every week about my project, I didn't just verify what I
had written, but was compelled to read a lot more because what I write can be
viewed by anyone else! So we take that _extra_ care in putting down right
content. And when we do that, the concepts sink down deep! I think that's one
of the good parts of blogging I enjoy the most!

~~~
shittyanalogy
Which is why tumblr is a wealth of researched and thought through, informative
posts.

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unethical_ban
I'd love to. What platform should I use? Requirements:

    
    
        * No Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal
        * Easy to configure and deploy
        * Internal comments subsystem preferable
    

I was looking at rigging up Dokuwiki. It obviously has the ability to publish
data/articles, it has plugins to give a discussions page, user/ACL support and
it's pretty simple to deploy. Drawback is it's not designed by default with
the "reverse chrono" ordering, tagging of articles, etc...

I'm lookin at Jekyll for static content, which is pretty much what a simple
blog can be, but I keep getting errors trying to use rubygems (not a rubyist,
here).

~~~
edent
Why not use WordPress? It's simple to install, configure, and deploy. Works on
any web host. Internal comments. Auto-updates to keep you running on the
latest version if you want.

~~~
ekianjo
wordpress as default does not handle lots of traffic without crashing. You
need to use cache plugins to make it work well with lots of visitors. Not a
"solid" solution out of the box.

~~~
brudgers
If your blog crashes from too many hits, congratulations. Few people write
that well. Their audiences tend to forgive them.

Most blogs die from loneliness- even more never launch because it's so much
easier not to write.

~~~
hengheng
I've seen default wordpress installations on simple vhosts crash at 50 daily
visitors, basically every time two people visited at the same time. You do
need caching, and you need to set it up manually, and that's probably
Wordpress.com's sales pitch nowadays.

~~~
brudgers
If your blog is getting 50 daily visitors, congratulations.

~~~
ekianjo
Really ? That's kind of low, though. I would have thought most blogs get at
least a couple of hundred visits (and not bots) every day.

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vjeux
I wrote a similar article 3 years ago, it's impressive how many arguments we
have in common. [http://blog.vjeux.com/2011/analysis/start-a-technical-
blog-i...](http://blog.vjeux.com/2011/analysis/start-a-technical-blog-its-
worth-it.html)

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Myrmornis
Haha I think hacker news just sent me to the worst page in the Internet. Over-
earnest, self-congratulatory guff about "blogging" and "innovation".

 _I think my friend Kris Marciniak (Rallynotes.com) first got me interested in
blogging. Valeria Maltoni inspired me with the potential in conversation
beyond the automotive forums where I’d experienced real world connectivity as
a result of sharing ideas online. Now here I am, discussing blogging as it
pertains to innovation on a blog about as geographically far away from me in
phoenix as you can get, as someone who sees publishing as his life’s work. And
it all started with a blog.

Kinda makes me want to write more. Thanks, Tim._

