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MidJourney Prompt: a blond blogger sitting in front of his laptop at a desk with a lot of books around him

I was once a tech blogger. I wrote a lot about WordPress, and later about Kirby and other programming stuff. It was good at the time and helped many people, at least according to statistics and some feedback.

I liked it back then. I could help others relatively easily. But the behavior of the site visitors changed over time. At first, I received responses to my posts in the form of comments or emails. That was good. On the one hand, because I naturally enjoy it when someone thanks me for the help, on the other hand, because it helped me improve my writing when people wrote that they didn't understand something.

But one day that was over. The page views continued to rise, and feedback rapidly decreased. People searched for solutions to their problems, found my posts, copied the helpful source code, and then disappeared after completing their work.

I don't blame anyone for that. I do the same thing, and I bet most of you do too. There's a reason there are so many StackOverflow jokes.

That's not a big deal. Although I believe that we could make some bloggers happy by simply leaving a short "thank you" in the comments instead of disappearing silently. But that's just how it is; we're all always in a hurry.

And now AI and LLM are coming, and they will make it even worse. If we ask Bing, ChatGPT, Google, or the SearchEngineOfTheFuture, we will likely not get link lists in many cases. We will get our answers directly in, for example, code snippets. And these contents will come from blogs and repositories and co. Even if such content remains relevant as a source, interactions will continue to decrease.

What I have taken from all of this:

I don't want to write for search engines, I don't want to write for LLMs, I don't want thousands of silent visitors. I want my site to be a place for lively exchange; I like interactions. Creating such a place is difficult but possible.

I will continue to write and speak about technology in my own way, which will hopefully be somewhat entertaining. But I will incorporate it into other topics. The technical implementations should be the engine for the topics that interest and/or occupy me.

Such posts will probably then migrate to the "hub," where some are already slumbering. Here in the blog, they will then perhaps appear as meta-topics.

Why am I writing this down? In the weekly review, I already mentioned that I am currently reading a lot to find out how to proceed here. This is not new, but I want to have more momentum here again. I will now occasionally publish posts like this one. As a reference and anchor for me when I feel stuck with writing.

A blue bird sitting in front of a laptop, stacks of money around him, photorealistic

The news is making the rounds that with the Twitter Blue subscription, tweets of up to 10,000 characters can now be written. With a simple trick, it is possible to publish long posts even without Twitter Blue!

Here's how:

1. Go to wordpress.org or getkirby.com in your browser and download the latest version
2. Find an affordable hosting package; there are even some with pre-installed WordPress
3. Unpack the CMS zip file and upload it
4. Click through the installation process; it only takes a few minutes for both
5. Choose a nice theme
6. Install plugins for webmentions and ActivityPub
7. Post the URL of your new site on your Twitter account
8. Log out of Twitter
9. Start blogging

Okay, I'm sorry, but only a little bit. But let's be honest, right now, anything is probably better than getting involved in this Twitter business. If you don't have your own blog yet, now is the right time to start one. Stay away from all those posts that explain how to run a successful blog, when to post, and how a post should be structured. Just get started, write whatever you want. Write long articles or short "tweets." This is your blog, anything is possible, everything is allowed.

And then share your content with the world from there. Using old-school channels like RSS feeds, but also using ActivityPub. Comment on other blogs, have others comment on your blog, and send webmentions. Network. Make regular backups. Don't let the platforms fool you.

Yes, having your own blog costs money, but you'll probably come out cheaper than with Twitter Blue, and you'll have complete freedom. And you know what? If you want more someday, that's not a problem either. Start a podcast, an online course, a community. Do whatever you want. You have all the possibilities and hardly any limitations. This is your thing! Have fun!

RSS is not dead, on the contrary. I read a lot via RSS feed and I have a problem with Feedly and Reeder. Maybe someone has a solution for me?

RSS feeds are not dead, instead they are more relevant than ever in times of collapsing platforms, I read most of my articles and posts through this channel. I chose Feedly back then (which is currently a bit controversial). I was attracted by all the functions around RSS.

I use the function of subscribing to newsletters in Feedly and then presenting them as a feed very intensively, and I also used to filter and read Twitter lists, when Twitter wasn't as bad as it is now.

I also really like to use Feedly Boards. I save articles that I have already read and don't want to keep on my reading list, but that I want to save. Each board represents a specific topic. It's like my personal topic archive. It's really cool because I can also save articles I read directly on a webpage via a browser plugin, not via RSS.

Now there are still many RSS feeds that only show a short intro and then you have to go to the website to continue reading. Website owners want to move visitors to their site. As a website owner, I can understand that. As a reader, it really annoys me. I read posts through this channel because many websites make it difficult to read. Whether it's because the lines are endlessly long or for some other reason. This teasing and then having to continue reading on the website is really annoying.

That's where Reeder comes in, because it offers a workaround. A small button that I can click when I should actually continue reading on a website. Then Reeder does some magic, it goes *pling*, fairy dust and glitter are sprayed in the room, you hear a soft giggle, and I can read the entire text in Reeder. In the style of Reeder, readable. Awesome!

If I really like an article, I also like to visit the site after reading and leave a comment.

Now, all of this clashes a bit because I can't use my Feedly Boards in Reeder. I see them as tags, but I can't assign a tag to a post. I assume this is because it doesn't run through the Feedly API, but is still good old RSS. And I can't edit RSS items. So the tags are there, but readonly.

So now I have to add posts on the reading list in Reeder, then switch to Feedly and then move these posts to a board and remove them from the reading list. It's a bit annoying, but I can't think of another solution.

How do you read RSS? Do you read RSS? Do you use a service like Feedly? What reader do you use? Write me a comment or webmention, I would be happy to hear from you!

It was foreseeable that it would happen: Brid.gy is discontinuing its Twitter support at the end of April. Brid.gy is a great service that allows users to bring data from major platforms back to the feediverse, including tweets.

I've been using it for a long time on my website. Some of the comments on my blog posts were replies that came in via Twitter, and Brid.gy helped with that. The service signed in through my Twitter account and regularly scanned for replies. If a reply contained a link to one of my posts, Brid.gy sent that tweet as a webmention to my blog.

Two plugins are used on my site: the IndieConnector Plugin, which can receive and send webmentions, gets the webmention from Brid.gy and distributes it in the CMS. Then the Komment Plugin takes over and saves the webmention as a comment under the appropriate article. This way, people could respond to my posts on Twitter for a long time.

Brid.gy has been using the free Twitter API, which will no longer be available in the future. As stated in this post, switching to the paid API would be too expensive, so tweets will no longer be available as comments.

Since I haven't been using Twitter myself for several months now, and am now focusing exclusively on Mastodon, this change won't affect me as much anymore.

Why am I explaining all of this in so much detail?

Because Brid.gy can do so much more than just Twitter. And it will still be possible to collect responses from other sources, such as Mastodon. Since these responses will also arrive as webmentions, they will appear here (and if you want, also on your own site) as comments under the posts.

By the way, with the IndieConnector plugin, it's not only possible to receive and send Mastodon posts, but also to turn your own website into its own Mastodon instance! This way, people can follow your blog on Mastodon (or other ActivityPub services), and you can also follow other people's blogs. So definitely check it out, I think it's worth it!

Johannes schrieb zu seinem 15ten Blog-Geburtstag über das Sterben der Blogosphäre. Die wurde ja immer wieder totgesagt, aber nun sieht es wirklich nicht gut aus.

In den Nischen werden Blogs wieder etwas populärer, aber oftmals sind sie nicht mehr das, was sie mal waren™️. Oftmals fehlt eine Kommentarfunktion, eine Vernetzung untereinander findet im Grunde gar nicht mehr statt. Aber zumindest scheint sich ein wenig was zu bewegen.