"Media change, the blog as a constant, what an exciting topic!" I thought and planned this post, researched the beginnings of blogs and was ready to work out what the constant is. Again and again I came to the conclusion that there is only one single constant!

It starts with wanting to define what a blog actually is. Difficult. You could probably ask twenty bloggers and get twenty different answers. Let's skip the click to Wikipedia, a theoretical definition won't help us here.

What we can probably agree on is this: A blog is a chronologically arranged collection of posts on a website. At least that's a constant that runs through all blogs. But not what I'm looking for.

The difficulty alone of naming what a blog is already shows what it is not: constant. The only constant, one might think, is steady change. That's what version 1 of this post concluded.

A pretty weak argument. If someone else had presented that as an insight to me, I would close the tab at the latest now.

Perhaps we'll find the constant if we place "the blog" alongside other media forms of the past, let's say, twenty years. About twenty years ago, blogs found their way into the mainstream, if you will.

I was almost willing to write that media consumption has changed several times drastically in those twenty years, but the blog was always there. "Stable," I thought, "but completely off the mark."

We all used to read long texts on the web, but then other formats came along, especially video. First longer videos and with Vine, Instagram and finally TikTok, video lengths became shorter and shorter. Today nobody watches videos longer than a few seconds.

That's all nonsense, of course. We all still read diligently and anyone who wants to accuse "young people" of just sitting in front of TikTok watching short videos has never been on Twitch, where people watch streamers for hours.

The demise of different media formats is regularly conjured up. The demise doesn't happen, but it shows that those who positioned themselves flexibly early on are better off today than others.

Good. No (digital) media form of the last twenty years has significantly lost relevance or disappeared entirely. The traffic figures shift between media again and again, but they're all still there.

So saying that in contrast to other media forms, blogs are still there, also limps. We would be back at the beginning of our search.

Speaking of beginnings.

The first weblog named as such went online in 1997 – Dave Winer's Scripting News¹. But even before that there were already similar websites that called themselves Cybertagebuch (cyber diary), for example.

Posts in blogs could also simply be one-liners in the past. Many posts in my blog looked like this twenty years ago:

And I wasn't alone. Short thoughts, an image, long texts, all of that existed. Unlike in newspapers, on television, on news sites, which at best categorize their pieces into formats like "glossary," "reportage," "commentary" etc., the format "blog post" never existed.

In we 2006/2007 saw the first major wave of migration. Many of the bloggers who had previously written short blog posts discovered Twitter for themselves, and later Facebook too. Short posts migrated to these networks, which were also much more open back then, offered interfaces and provided RSS feeds. So why not?

As a result, many blogs died.

Dying is a good keyword. RSS was introduced in 1999 and has basically been dead ever since. I have more RSS feeds subscribed than ever and heard that there's supposed to be something like podcasts.

But RSS is a good example of something that happened and happens with and in blogs. They drive the development of certain technologies. RSS, pingbacks, trackbacks, webmentions, comments. But also network effects, driven by blogrolls, webrings, communities.

In my original article, I tried to work out at this point why blogs are so important today, why they represent important, open, democratic pillars. I wanted to raise the flag and convince you all to blog by all means.

If you're reading this, I probably don't need to convince you anyway. I know which bubble I'm moving in, and what I wanted to write there was almost fishing for compliments. Let's skip that.

Besides, it distracts us from the actual question. The blog as a constant?

Considering the lifespan, we're talking about a good 25 years, sure, there the blog is a constant. The news site too. The forum too. Mailing lists...

If we compare the blog as a kind of format and compare it with the known formats. No, then the blog is rather the opposite of a constant. There was never the uniform format, as we have already established. The journalistic formats, on the other hand, have existed much longer.

Of course, I could now start with the fact that I've been blogging for so long and my blog is therefore a constant in my life, but that's not true either. There were years when I rather operated my podcast, there were years when I published almost nothing, there were years when I let myself be carried away and tried to be a successful blogger, and was able to make quite a few bullshit bingo crosses.

The topic brings media change to the forefront.

If we take the last twenty years, because those are the years I consciously experienced, then I see little media change. I see platforms replacing each other and I see the phenomenon of ever-larger perception silos. In my opinion, however, this is not media change, but a form of radicalization that is increasingly coming to light today. There is now enough literature on the topic; you almost get the feeling that this has been worked through step by step.

"The media" now have the task of facing this. We bloggers probably too.

The blog as a constant; I don't think that exists. As much as I initially wanted to promote exactly that. Is that bad now? No. Blogs have always developed in all possible directions. We all have our own concept of them. And probably that's exactly the reason why we still talk about blogs today. They constantly change, there is no the blog.

Of course there are blogs that consistently stick to what they've been doing for years. I look forward to reading their posts just as much as posts from blogs that keep trying new things.

You know what's beautiful? I can already see lots of blog posts from the other participants in the blog weeks in front of me, who will write exactly the opposite. And I'll probably be able to agree with much of it.

I still can't define what exactly a blog is, let alone what the constant could be. I find it almost a bit unsatisfying to end like this. I would like to have something I can present. But I believe that just as little as the format "blog" is needed, a constant is also not needed.

I don't even know what my blog will look like in six months. Maybe it's also due to the concept of blogs that I have in my head. I always wanted and still want to try so much and break out of the conventional.

For me, only one thing is constant: The opportunity to change something is always there.

I've been writing for quite some time now, not only on my own blog, but also on the konzentrik blog, for the "Server Side Stories" podcast, and recently also for the Sociabli blog.

Konzentrik and Server Side Stories run under the same domain and use Kirby as CMS and my podcaster plugin. I'm primarily responsible for managing the content there, so it makes sense to extend the Obsidian Kirby Sync setup to it.

I'm currently still scribbling away with pen and paper on how to approach this. Since my article, the Obsidian plugin has changed in a few places. Querying articles in Kirby has become easy: Instead of filling out various fields, an article URL is sufficient. This not only makes working easier, but also paves the way for making the plugin publicly available.

My next step, however, is to expand the settings. The goal is to allow individual folders to be assigned to different API endpoints, on which the Kirby plugin will then listen to. In my case, that would be my own site and konzentrik's.

Depending on which Obsidian folder I execute a sync command in, the corresponding API endpoint is called. The rest should then proceed as usual. It works the same way when uploading articles to Kirby.

Another task I have ahead of me is uploading images. I have no idea how to go about this yet. The images linked in Obsidian are located in a subfolder and need to be uploaded to Kirby in one direction, but also downloaded again when querying articles. I don't have any ideas for this yet.

The next step, however, will be the various API endpoints. I think this can be implemented with manageable effort.

We have released two new Kirby plugins that will help us – and hopefully, you, too – with planning and publishing posts.

There's the AutoPublish plugin, which does exactly what the name suggests. In the panel, you can activate the AutoPublish function for each page and then set a time for when the page should be published.

That way, you can let the page slumber as a draft, and the plugin will then take care of publishing it at the appropriate time. All common hooks will be triggered, so other plugins may also notice.

AutoPublish - Maurice Renck

Dieses Kirby-Plugin veröffentlicht automatisch eine Seite, wenn der Toggle aktiviert und ein Datum festgelegt wurde.

If you want to know when your pages go live, our new Calendar-View Plugin can help you. It provides a subscribable calendar that displays all scheduled posts. You have the option to configure sources and filters. In your calendar app, you can then see when posts are scheduled or have gone live.

Calendar View - Maurice Renck

Zeige alle in Kirby geplanten Beiträge in deinem Kalender an.

Why?

Although I am a developer by profession, a significant part of my (work) day consists of planning, sketching, writing, and publishing contributions. Of course, here on my website, but also on all the channels that we operate within the company. And these are becoming increasingly more.

It’s therefore enormously important for us to be well-prepared and not have to worry about certain things. Otherwise, we couldn’t maintain our workload.

When publishing and planning, we have two plugins that we have now also released as part of our new Tools page. Let me preface this by saying that one of them is paid. This is therefore also a bit of shameless self-promotion.

Foremost: “We” are konzentrik. We are a small development team and build all sorts of tools and services for ourselves and our customers. A part of our work is the regular writing of articles. For our podcast and some blogs that we operate for our tools.

That's a lot of content over a month – two podcast episodes a month, a blog post for our blog, until recently another blog post for our streaming service, and soon weekly posts for Sociabli.

Batch processing

We can only achieve this through good planning. We meet regularly online to brainstorm new content ideas and then develop them as keywords in the next step. Then I sit down and formulate the finished posts, always three episodes at a time, for our podcast.

In this way, we have already planned our podcast until the end of the year and have recorded a large part of the episodes, and at least have outlines for the rest. We meet once a month to record three episodes, but only two are broadcast, so we were able to build up a good buffer.

I write my notes in Obsidian, from where they then migrate to the Kirby Panel. Here, among other things, our two plugins are used.

With the AutoPublish plugin, we can schedule posts. So I’ve already prepared everything: texts, audio, graphics. I can then activate automatic publishing for the posts and set a date for when it should happen. The plugin then ensures that the post goes online at the designated time.

For me, that’s important because I can get the whole pre-production done at once and won’t have to worry thinking about it or planning meetings around the time of publication.

Since the calendar is already open every morning, I quickly see which contributions are due during the week or have already gone online. Then I can look for answers, or share one or two links myself if I'd like to.

When combined with other plugins, such as the IndieConnector for automatic posting, you can build a good chain. I could imagine that there may still come one or two helpful plugins to make the entire flow even easier. For now, these two new plugins have already been a great help to me and maybe as well for others.

You can already install them, but they haven't yet been published on the official Kirby plugin directory, at this point. Please reach out to me if you still need features or if there are any missing steps.

Subscribe to a certain calendar URL and see all your planned and published posts in your default calendar app.

Always keep an overview of your website's planned and published posts. This plugin provides you with a secure URL that you can subscribe to in any common calendar.

In the settings, you can specify which sources should be used and whether these sources should also be filtered. This way, your planned posts become a content plan in you calendar.

Installation

Use one of these methods to install the plugin:

• composer (recommended): composer require konzentrik/calendar-view
• zip file: unzip main.zip as folder site/plugins/calendar-view

License

Kirby Calendar View can be used in a limited free mode. In order to use the full-featured version, you'll have to purchase a valid Kirby license and a valid plugin license.

You can buy a license at https://tools.konzentrik.de/.

Usage

First configure a secret in the config.php file:

'konzentrik.calendarview' => [
    'secret' => 'YOUR-SECRET',
],

Then set your timezone:

'konzentrik.calendarview' => [
    'secret' => 'YOUR-SECRET',
    'timezone' => 'Europe/Berlin',
],

Tell the plugin which pages contain your posts:

'konzentrik.calendarview' => [
    'secret' => 'YOUR-SECRET',
    'timezone' => 'Europe/Berlin',
    'pages' => [
        'blog',
        'notes',
    ],
],

You can also use collections as a source:

'konzentrik.calendarview' => [
    'secret' => 'YOUR-SECRET',
    'timezone' => 'Europe/Berlin',
    'collections' => [
        'blog',
        'notes',
    ],
],

Then subscribe to the calendar URL: https://yourdomain.com/YOUR-SECRET/calendarview.ics

Options

Please prefix every option with konzentrik.calendarview..

License

Kirby Calendar View can be used in a limited free mode. In order to use the full featured version, you'll have to purchase a valid Kirby license & a valid plugin license.

A post from the series of Blogwochen 2025.

There’s a lot to discuss why this is the case. From my experience, it’s now largely due to the fact that everyone has heard of WordPress or knows a website that’s been implemented with it. When working with clients, they often don’t even ask about another CMS. A personal website === WordPress.

As a developer, I then see it as my task to weigh things and, if necessary, refer to other systems that might be better suited for the client.

When I started blogging, the question of WordPress didn't even arise because it didn't exist at the time. When it emerged into the light, I tried it out and stayed with it for a long time. At that time, WordPress was more of a blogging system than a CMS. The focus was on posts, comments, and trackbacks/pingbacks. Additionally, there was still the need to be able to create "static" pages because an imprint was required or an "About" page was nice.

That wasn’t a surprise, as WordPress eventually began as a fork of b2/cafelog.

Meanwhile, that has changed and WordPress has lost its focus on blogging and its lightness. Instead, it has become a huge website builder thanks to endless plugin lists.

That may suit many users, but I find it more hindering. I prefer systems that support my main task, in this case writing and publishing posts.

I had already said goodbye to WordPress about ten years ago and have been using a different system on my site ever since.

Alternatives

There are numerous alternatives to WordPress. These range from services that handle the entire technical aspect, to classic, hosted systems, to static-site generators which are more geared towards technically skilled users. Many systems, particularly those offered as services, have grown beyond simple blog systems.

Ghost

Ghost is undoubtedly one of the most well-known systems. I’ve been observing it since the initial announcement and found the technical foundation and development interesting. I’ve also considered and evaluated it for clients a few times. However, I’ve never actually used it myself, which ultimately always came down to the fact that I have very specific ideas and such systems are naturally always limited in their adaptability.

Ghost launched as a WordPress alternative, and they succeeded in doing so. Even though the system can be self-hosted, most will likely use it directly as a cloud service.

Recently, the focus has shifted strongly towards monetization, particularly memberships. A good choice, especially if you want to earn money with your texts. The newsletter system has also been expanded alongside the popularity of Substack.

Someone looking for an all-in-one publishing platform might find what they’re looking for here. Those who just want to blog a little will probably be scared off by the prices.

Steady

Actually, Steady isn't a proper blogging system, but because I was just talking about Ghost, I want to mention it at least. Steady is more of an alternative to Patreon. However, it’s possible to run a blog, newsletter, and podcast with it, and to put your content behind a paywall, either fully or partially.

Here, the focus is on memberships.

For me, it’s just an addition to my page that I’d like to use more in the future. However, anyone who doesn’t want to deal with the technology at all could find what they’re looking for here.

micro.blog

If you’re looking for a pure blogging system, you’ll find it here. The focus is clearly on blogging – with the great technical finesse of cross-posting. Miro.blog can be used like Mastodon, or as a full-fledged blog with podcast and photo features.

Blogging can be done on the web or via app. The special thing is that your blog can be subscribed to via ActivityPub, for example on Mastodon, and that posts are automatically distributed to other services.

With only one dollar a month as the lowest price, a great alternative for anyone who wants to start right away and doesn’t want to worry about anything.

Blot

Similarly, Blot is also good. I like that every post is a text file that sits on your own computer and then is synchronized via Dropbox, Google Drive, Git, or iCloud and made into a blog post.

Although one doesn't operate the system themselves here, one still retains access to their data.

Blot is very minimalist and not entirely cheap at $6 a month, but certainly a suitable alternative.

Kirby

"But Maurice, those are all subscription-based services, why?!"

Excellent question!
Most of the systems mentioned are indeed SaaS rather than self-hosted, although some do provide their source code freely.

I’m not recommending other hosted systems for just one reason: I haven’t tried any in a long time.

And that’s due to the system I use to run my own website: Kirby.

I have to confess that I tried Craft a few years ago because it looked so stylish, but my enthusiasm quickly wore off.

Anyone who follows my blog will surely know that I’m developing some plugins for Kirby and occasionally try out and blog about little experiments here.

But why Kirby?
Because of the good documentation, the nice people behind it, and the flexibility.

I admit: What is a blessing for me as a developer, can be off-putting for many users who simply want to blog. I just like to try things out and enjoy pushing boundaries, and I can easily do that with a system like Kirby.

I can not only control the appearance and behavior of my website as I want, but also the panel – the Kirby admin interface. Here’s what it looks like for me right now:

I can relatively easily write plugins and use them to build small components and interfaces, which I truly enjoy doing, for example, to be able to blog with Obsidian, or to create new posts with Raycast.

I write a lot about all these things, and I’ve created a collection page here, a collection page where you can find my articles and plugins.

What now?

Of course, there are still so many other CMS, tools for generating static pages, building block systems on the web… I could probably fill many more with them.

This post is part of a series, and others will be writing about this topic. Combined, it will likely result in a fascinating list of alternatives. Eventually, one should collect all the posts and consolidate all the systems into one post.

I wish these posts would draw attention to systems beyond WordPress. Even though WordPress is certainly a good system, there are so many other great and sometimes better-suited systems. It’s important to stay curious!

To join this June activity, create a blog post (or a page, if you prefer) titled “Junited 2025.” Throughout the month, update it with links to blog posts or blogs that you feel deserve some extra love.

That’s a nice idea, I think, and so I’m joining in. This is therefore my Junited 2025 contribution, which I will update regularly over the coming weeks. I have also pinned it at the top of the blog.

The first link for the month naturally goes directly to Robert:

https://birming.com/2025/06/01/junited/

I’ve been following the project from the beginning and still think that Ghost really integrates exciting ideas and has good features. I’m maybe just a little spoiled by Kirby’s flexibility, that’s why it hasn’t quite clicked with any project and clients yet. But I find the development Ghost has already completed very interesting.

On the one hand, there is the Bloggerrolle plugin, which pings the service, and on the other hand, a Kirby plugin for automatically publishing pages, which we developed for ourselves at konzentrik. It was basically already finished and just needed a few preparations to make the releases work.

(And somehow, I'm still quite dissatisfied with how the detail pages of my projects look.)

This Kirby plugin will auto publish a page when a toggle is enabled and a date set.

Installation

Use one of these methods to install the plugin:

• composer (recommended): composer require konzentrik/konzentrik
• zip file: unzip main.zip as folder site/plugins/autopublish

Usage

Add panel fields

Add the autopublish field to your page blueprint:

fields:
  autopublish: fields/autopublish

Or add the toggle and date field by yourself:

fields:
  autopublish:
    label: Autopublish
    type: toggle
    translate: false
  autopublishDate:
    label: Autopublish Date
    type: date
    time: true
    translate: false
    when:
      autopublish: true

If you already have a date field you want to use, you can configure the plugin to use it, by setting this option in your config.php

'konzentrik.autopublish.dateField' => 'my-date-field',

Configure and use the webhook

First set a secret in your config.php:

'konzentrik.autopublish.secret' => 'my-secret',

You can now trigger the Webhook:

https://example.com/autopublish/cron/my-secret

Replace example.com with your hostname and my-secret with the secret you set in your config.php. Whenever you trigger the Webhook the plugin will look for unpublished pages with a date older or equal to the current date-time and then publishes the page.

Options

Please make sure to prefix all options with konzentrik.autopublish or use the array notation.