

Ask HN: Blog options and experiences? - Mz

If you have a blog, what are you using as a platform?  Is it a good or bad fit? Why is it a good or bad fit for you personally or what do you like/dislike about it?  How often do you update?  What do you typically talk about? What prompts you to post to it? Of course, a link to the blog would be nice too.<p>Any thoughts or discussion on the general topic of blogging is welcome.<p>Thank you!
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imp
Yeah, I think other forums might be better suited for talking about blogging
in general. Here are previous discussions about blogging platforms on HN:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=blogging+platform+site:news.y...](http://www.google.com/search?q=blogging+platform+site:news.ycombinator.com)

For my two cents, I've been using Wordpress a lot, but I'm currently working
on switching to custom blog software because of the continuous security
problems with Wordpress.

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Mz
Thanks for the link. That might be plenty of information for me for now. I
tried playing around with Wordpress and it just didn't click for me. I have
done better with Textpattern but I am still wondering if there is something
out there that is a better fit or if it is merely a matter of time stress
right now.

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adrianscott
I am now using posterous (even though I'm not blogging heavily). I can have a
domain name working with it, multiple blogs from one account, I can set up a
favicon, and more. I like their approach better than wordpress.com, and I'd
rather focus on other tasks than set up my own wordpress install, adding
plugins etc.

~~~
Mz
Is posterous the one where you can email your blog posts? I was thinking about
that. It has a lot of appeal. I email myself a lot of stuff, and often cannot
find it again later. :-/

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adrianscott
Yes, you can email to post, and you can also post from the web, and post links
to other sites/posts via a bookmarklet javascript thingie.

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jarsj
I wonder what no comments from last 7 hours mean, either people here are bored
of blogging or answers to your questions are too obvious.

~~~
Mz
I have a long history of completely sucking at starting conversations in
online forums. Typically, conversations I try to start either get completely
ignored or go down in flames in the worst possible way. Over the years, I have
tried to work on this. I go down in flames less, so there has been progress.
After I make the observation a few times that I suck at this, I start getting
"pity vote" comments -- ie people reply just so there aren't zero comments. I
think that may be worse than getting zero comments. I don't remark on my total
suckitude to whine. It's just an objective fact. My last submission to HN
generated zero comments and the one before that generated pity comments along
the lines of "Gee, that's tough. Maybe you should look elsewhere for support".
Of 4 submissions here so far, I've managed to successfully generate
conversation/meaningful, useful replies one time. That's probably about par
for the course for me.

New questions to add to my above list: How would you ask this
question/introduce this topic such that it would get replies? What did I do
wrong?

:-D

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jarsj
I hope its not your objective to generate comments. I am not an expert (under
200 karma) but will advice anyways :-

1) Ask something when you need help and its not something obvious. Googling on
your question before posting might help. For example, "What is the search
engine you guys use ?" is a bad question.

2) Show something when you have something worth showing. Many people here are
creating something and they like seeing what others are creating. If you are
proud of something you built, show us.

3) People usually tend to contribute to a discussion when the original author
seemed to have done some research himself. Take the "Brag HN" thread for
example, I wonder if the author hadn't posted some examples about what kind of
"about you" he wants to hear, it would have generated so much discussion.

4) Lastly, follow your instincts and have fun.

~~~
Mz
I wasn't really looking to generate comments when I replied to you. A) I'm
very chatty and don't like to just ignore people who are speaking to me. (I've
actually had to work on learning when to let it go and that some comments do
not really need a reply.) B) I find something very humorous about my poor
ability to start good conversations online. I'm infamous for being very
talkative and for having a habit of generating big reactions completely
unintentionally. Somehow, I haven't mastered the art of "bottling" it, so to
speak.

Anyway, I am pleasantly surprised to see a couple of other comments. So it's
all good. :-) (And would have been all good even if no one had replied. I
figured I was doing it badly when I wrote it. I left it up to see where it
would go anyway.)

