iFranky

I started a challenge with myself… and the world. It’s about blogging. I’m returning.

The challenge is simple: make a blog popular (subjectively), without whoring the blog out in comments or on traffic platforms. Just rely on the ability to write passionately, opinionatedly and know some keyword stuff SEO have a popular topic.
Both blogs enter an already overcrowded area and target a passionate and active community, which actually makes things harder, but could also be an advantage.

In one month I will report here about the first weeks and how stats have grown (or not).
Both URLs will not be used in comments on more than 2 other blogs each.

Update: Life has come in between the challenge and the reality. I still believe in the concept and several blogs are in the planning. One more actually: Bloggers Turn Me On, a return to the good ol’ (JOAB) times, just a little more high profile and less obligatory as then. See you soon in a blog coming to a browser on your monitor.

One rule of thumb:

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.

One more victim of RSS:

I treat RSS with undeserving priority, and this causes two big problems: 1) I’ll stop whatever I’m doing to read, flag, or ‘mark as read’ all new RSS items as they come in, and 2) I’ll go to absurd lengths to ensure I have zero unread items whenever I walk away from a computer.

This compulsion has reached the point of being a real problem, and I’m finally taking steps to rectify it.

Back in the old days, when I still wrote on blogs about blogging, I suffered a major RSS burn out. My OPML list had reached the amazing and less tantalizing number of 800 entries, and every day I had to drag my back part to read. Reading, which once used to be a passion of mine.

Over the last days, I have carefully been adding feeds to my newsreader again. Even entries from the good old past.

Blogs written by pundits wannabe pundits, overly ethical and always according to the KIAKIB (Know It All, Know It Better) principle.

I might prefer to go down the snarky Gawker and Valleywag path.

I could list many reasons why I have switched from WordPress to another platform, but the biggest annoyances were following:

Principal reasons.

The mix Automattic/WordPress confuses me. Although the whole wordpress.com platform, as marvelous as it is, totally falls within the GPL principles, I think a huge greyzone has grown around the business side of developing WordPress(.org). It is clear that every code change made to the WordPress(.org) change can directly be used by the Automattic team for their wordpress.com platform. Automattic themselves, maintain a stranglehold on the plugins and themes directory, with Matt Mullenweg actively demanding that everything is released under the GPL License.

WordPress has outgrown me.

WordPress is a solid platform and certainly has become very flexible and rather extensive. With a little of WordPress knowledge, you can build platforms as big and customized as you want. No limits are set, even not the sky. Suffice to visit All Things D to admire how customizable the platform is. All I want here is a blog.

Read More…

I went ahead and deleted the WordPress installation and installed Chyrp. Note that this was a thing which had to happen, already last year I had a period I played here with MT, not to forget my several rants around the mentality, spirit of the closed garden that Automattic is.

I am looking forward to play around with Chyrp and prepare a new design, with more color than before, I might stick to my Cutline rotating header images tho. For now tho, I am happy that I am not on WordPress anymore.

Now I must play sleep.

I’m not proposing that the long-form blog is dead in the water. Just that it will reach a point where it’s frequently punctuated with the sort of content currently restricted to tumblelogs. We’re going to see a sort of amalgamation of the two becoming commonplace. With the long, thought out posts punctuated with other “short” content.

Nostrich.net numblr.nostrich.net.

Exactly what I intend to do here: combine a regular blog with a tumblelog.