Blogs and baked goods
It’s not that hard to make bread. You simply need the right combination of flour, yeast and water, plus an oven to cook it in. With a little work, you can end up with a delicious loaf most of the time. Plus, you can customize the recipe to exactly your taste.
So why doesn’t everyone make their own bread?
Because it’s a kind of pain in the ass. A lot of things can go wrong, leaving you with a blob of sticky dough. It takes time. It requires bowls and pans that have to be washed, plus an oven that heats up your kitchen. And truth be told, most people aren’t exactly Nancy Silverton.
All in all, it’s much easier to buy a loaf at the store.
Blogs are like bread.
To make a blog, you need something to write about, plus software and hardware to put it on the web. 1
When I first launched johnaugust.com in 2003, I assembled everything on my own computer, then uploaded it to a shared host. In baker parlance, I mixed the dough in my own bowls, then carried it down the street to the community oven to bake it. I was outsourcing the expensive hardware.
By 2004, I outsourced most of the software as well, running Movable Type on the shared server. Later that year, I switched to WordPress, which has continued to run the site ever since.
I like WordPress a lot. It’s remarkably easy to install and theme. It’s powerful and flexible. It has an extremely active development community, so if there’s a feature you’d like, someone’s probably already built it.2
But make no mistake: you’re still baking your own bread. Things can go wrong. Really, really wrong. And when they do, it’s a lot of work to fix it. A bad loaf of bread is disappointing. A bad error in your database can be catastrophic.
Over the weekend, there was a lot of uproar about a worm attack on WordPress installations that wrecked some notable blogs. Amid the sometimes-smug observations by the unaffected, I found one point that needs to be elevated to basic principle:
Most people shouldn’t be running their own blogging software.
Services like Tumblr, Posterous and Blogger are excellent and free. WordPress.com, the hosted version of WordPress, gives you 90% of the benefits with none of the hassle.
In 2003, I had to run my own software. There was no choice. But if I were starting a blog from scratch today, I would do it on one of these services.3
Some people like making bread.
For all the hassles, there are some benefits to doing things yourself. Just like the artisanal baker can tinker with a recipe, the self-hosted blogger can tweak things just to his liking. He also has more control over his content — some services make it difficult to migrate.
In a month or two, I’ll be launching a revamped version of this site, which will continue to use WordPress. That means I’ll have to keep up with security updates, backups and a lot of general troubleshooting. There will be more worm attacks and self-inflicted wounds. I’ve decided it’s worth it. For most folks, it’s probably not.
If you’re considering starting a blog, ask yourself whether you really want to bake your own bread. Odds are, you probably just want a sandwich. Buy a loaf and get to it.
- Countless blogs are started without the “something to write about” part figured out, which is usually why they go dead after three weeks. ↩
- This weekend, I installed a plugin that automatically sends a backup of the site to my Gmail account. Total time: five minutes. ↩
- Also over the weekend, I nuked a few stray WordPress installations that had gone fallow. One of the pitfalls of WP’s easy installation process is that it’s tempting to throw up a site to test a concept. A year later, that mostly-empty blog is an attractive nuisance. I suspect that 80%+ of WP installations fall into this category. I’d propose the install scripts like Fantastico default to closed comments and randomized admin usernames. ↩
Articles
September 8th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I’m not (much of) a blogger, but when I heard about the attacks, my first thought was “I hope they don’t hit August’s site.”
RED
September 8th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
I had a blog about 10 years ago, hand-coded backend in PHP. It was very flexible, and did exactly what I wanted. It also was an enourmas pain in the ass to maintain, and I had to hand-code any new feature I wanted to add. I stopped work on it about 8 years ago.
I haven’t been tempted to start a new blog until recently, when I started playing with tumblr. It is ridiculously easy to use and set up, and I’m very happy with the results.
The hosted blog services are so good these days, you need to have an extremely good reason to use your own system on your own servers.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
I think most everyone should write a blog because keeping a journal is a good thing. Writing—even for egghead engineers, code-ninjas, and fru-fru designers—is something that’s good for the brain.
And soul.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Oy, I’m glad you blogged about this because I hadn’t heard about the worm. I’m good about updating my WordPress versions, and I don’t let people register as uers, but still… o_O
Maybe it’s vain, but I just like having my own domain. That said, I do think WordPress and BlogSpot have become very acceptable professional domains to blog off.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
John,
I’m just glad you’re continuing to blog. I’ve seen two good industry bloggers stop blogging – one said she’d shared all she had to share; the other said he didn’t have the time anymore. Regardless, I’m really glad your blog is alive and well!
September 8th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Damnit, John…
I wanna become a successful screenwriter so I can throw thousands of dollars away and participate in orgies where I’ll snort coke off Megan Fox’ ass… stop ruining my fantasies with this “tonight I’m gonna fix this PHP glitch I found last weekend bullshit!
:-)
September 8th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
If you are even remotely serious and professional, you will absolutely have a self-hosted blog. You will either run it yourself if you know how, or you will pay someone else to maintain it for you while you write the posts.
September 8th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
My own blog (click mah name!) is maintained via WordPress as well. In addition, I’ve self-taught myself HTML and CSS so while I can download themes, I know how to tweak the code without giving me headaches.
I often recommend WP to people because it’s actually very intuitive, clean, and easily manageable. I hope your metaphor doesn’t scare too many people away from the idea of blogging– I think it’s a lot easier to maintain than it may seem. It’s all about having ideas that can sustain themselves… and also, promotion. (BTW… any ideas on how to promote a blog without being annoying?)
Also, my web host (bluehost) generates automatic backups and restores for you. So there are many options available.
September 8th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
John;
I agree with you that Blogger or Wordpress.com (the version of Wordpress you don’t host) are great and are fine for virtually everyone who’s starting a blog.
But if you’re going to start a blog spend the $10 / year and get your own domain name. You can still use sites like Blogger for free for hosting even when using your own domain name. You never know where a blog is going to end up or if it’s going to take off and it’s going to be worth a lot more on it’s own branded domain name than a blogger sub-domain.
I also would recommend Wordpress.com (Wordpress.org is the self-hosted version John is talking about NOT Wordpress.com) because if and when your blog does take off and you want to switch to the self hosted version of Wordpress it will much easier.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Excellent advice.
I’m self-hosting and there is no way I could do all the fun stuff on the shared hosting. I’m crossing fingers now because I haven’t had any serious issues for a long time.
Meanwhile I have learned to tread carefully with plugins and plugin updates… You’re right: WHEN things go wrong, it’s often hours of stress (and a steep learning curve in PHPMyAdmin, MySQL, database tables etc.)
But overall WordPress is a fabulous platform and people tend to forget that we are getting tremendous value – for free.
It felt good when last year at WordCamp AU I had the opportunity to thank the WordPress team for the privilege.
September 8th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
This is in regards to your latest Tweet. Creating a twitter account for a single comment doesn’t seem logical, so I’ll comment here. You say you have to find changes in different drafts of a script. I don’t know the details of your problem, but this may help if you don’t know of it already. Or this may be useful to others in the future. In Final Draft (I’m using V7), go to ‘Tools’, then ‘ScriptCompare…’. Where you can merge two separate drafts of a script & see whats been untouched, edited, changed, deleted, etc. Great tool, had to use it a few times when in collaboration on a script. Hope this helps you John or anyone else who needs to compare drafts.
September 8th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I was actually inspired by your Script Challenge a few months ago to create a new blog.
The winner of said challenge – Spenturion and I began on July 26th and have written a one-page screenplay every day since. We plan to go for a year(and then maybe more if we are able).
(The website is http://pre-script-tion.blogspot.com/ for those of you interested.)
But I completely agree with you about customization and purpose. With both of my blogs I have tried to break the boundaries of the common templates that have oppressed creativity and uniqueness in the blogging world. Hopefully I have been able to be creative in my content as well.
As for software – I have been very frustrated by Blogger, but it seems to work okay and it was the first one I tried. I have just started working on a few blogs using Wordpress and I am very impressed and excited to explore it further.
@Ashley – I agree with buying a domain for a year, I have yet to commit to that, but it is a great idea.
September 9th, 2009 at 8:43 am
A recipe question: Are those little buttons to let people reddit/facebook/stumble/tweet/etc your post a wordpress.org thing? Always wanted them on my wordpress.com site. But can’t find that option.
September 9th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Great advice on blogging. I started mine back in April for a couple reasons. My blog is completely about the book I’m writing and tracking its progess. While it’s nice to have a central site to host it and talk about my process I also use it as a motivator to keep working on it (although I’m on a little break now; in between parts).
And Kevin, I’d also be curiuos to see how to advertise and expand the reader base without being annoying… Any tips?
@Ashley, thanks for the tip on a domain name. I’ll definetly look into that.
September 9th, 2009 at 10:02 am
“Most people shouldn’t be running their own blogging software.”
Very true. In fact, people with important expertise and/or experience (in other fields of endeavor) WON’T do so. I believe there are many significant voices we have yet to hear because setting up a good, reliable, transparent platform remains too much of a hassle for them.
September 9th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Great point!
September 9th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
You write: Most people shouldn’t be running their own blogging software.
I’d rephrase that: Most people shouldn’t be running their own software.
No, I’m not an Agent of Google trying to push Cloud or whatever the buzzword du jour is, but fundamentally, the problem is software. A lot of it is poorly written. Without examining the source (and sometimes even then), it’s very difficult to identify well-written software from dangerous software — and if that’s true for a software developer, imagine what it’s like for non-tech users. And the need to be your own system administrator is often overwhelming, even to those who know how.
The old saw goes: imagine if cars were like software – we’d all be driving flying luxury limos that got a million miles to the gallon … and exploded every few days, killing their occupants.
I wish I could offer a solution, but the problem is vast. We can’t rely on regulation (like, say, the automotive industry), because software is more general and complex than automobiles. We can’t rely on companies to fix problems, because it’s too expensive. Maybe there’s hope in crowd-sourced review processes, but I don’t hold out much hope.
September 9th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
I agree.
We’re doing all we can to make flexible self-hosting usable by more and more people (one-click WordPress upgrades, built in plugin installer, built in theme browser, etc), but there are limits. Self-hosting is never going to appropriate for everyone. Thankfully, WordPress.com has filled the gap (and others can compete in this space), so there is an appropriate version of WordPress for anyone who wants to publish on the web! My only advice for people who want to start out on WordPress.com is that you must buy a domain name. Don’t sharecrop on yourname.wordpress.com. Build up your own brand and give yourself a path forward to self-hosted WordPress or even a competing product.
And do note that it’s possible to move a self-hosted WordPress blog over to WordPress.com — so if running your own blogging software becomes more effort than it is worth, you don’t have to give up or start from scratch.
September 9th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
I make better bread.
Unk
September 10th, 2009 at 2:23 am
You say making bread is difficult etc etc. Well, I’ve got a breadmaker. Insert ingredients (so simply I can do it in under three minutes), press a few buttons, loaf ready in two hours. More nutritious, cheaper, more easily available than shop-bought bread. And if I want to tweak it (a mixture of half-brown half white flour is not available in shops but you can make it) I can.
Wordpress is the breadmaker of blogging software. These days you can even update it with a few clicks – it really is about as simple as breadmaker-baking.
Your metaphor fails on both counts, in my opinion. Shops aren’t always open; hosting services can be too busy for you. Only problem is if you run out of ingredients – but as it’s open source in Wordpress, that’s unlikely.
September 10th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Pretty good analogy, a little broad I reckon, as I have experienced the pains and awkwardness of upgrading wordpress in the past, backing up the databases, and know how tough that is, probably tougher than making the foccacia dough sitting in the corner of my kitchen.
That said, for the last two years, my web host has provided, one click backup, upgrade and install options on the back end Web Panel for Wordpress, Joomla and a dozen other content management softwares. Thereby solving for me a lot of the headache and at the same time, allowing me to run a wordpress site, a joomla site, ZenCart, Pligg, Moodle, Gallery, MediaWiki and more. All with one click Backup, and Upgrade features on the back end. Or you can point a domain or subdomain to your blogger/wordpress etc hosted site if things get too heavy.
Moderation rules, Bake your own bread, and buy bread too, they’re not exclusive things.
September 10th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Bread isn’t that easy to make.
September 11th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
@Charles:
How long have you been using your breadmaker? Email me back in one year (9/11/10) if you’re still using your breadmaker, and I’ll gift you one track on iTunes.
The better analogy for a breadmaker is iWeb: software on hardware that runs locally and can do a perfectly reasonable job making a blog. And like a breadmaker, everyone gives up on using it after a while.
Yes, stores are sometimes closed. But can you fix your breadmaker if something goes wrong?
September 11th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I totally agree with you here. In my own experiences I now am having to take my responsibilities as a bread maker a lot more seriously. After all, if you make your own bread you just will waste your own time and money if you screw up. But in my case if I leave a security hole open, or somehow do something that gets my blog taken down I ruin other people’s work and time too.
September 12th, 2009 at 12:23 am
I see two essential differences between blogging and baking your own bread (with a bread maker):
This is why I still bake my own bread, but would not use my own blog installation.
PS: John, do I qualify for 10 free tracks now?
September 12th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
For me I don’t have much choice. Because my line of work is adult entertainment and most of not all commercial blogging services don’t allow adult content.
September 12th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
@Rob Hooft:
No. It was a one-reader offer, future dated so that he’ll have to wrestle with dilemma of whether the bread machine is worth it.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
thanks for continuing to share, John.
i like the breadmaking analogy.
our household has been making our own bread the past six years. we have kids that can finish a store-bought loaf in one sitting. the homemade stuff is heavy and filling and can last TWO sittings. we calculated that each homemade loaf cost us NZD1.00 to make; an equivalent loaf at a shop would be at least NZD3.50 on special.
and how can this relate to my own self-hosted blog? i like the hands-on-ness of tinkering with the plug-ins, backing-up on a regular basis (thanks HEAPS for that link, by the bye), and avoiding actual writing. i could use Blogger, et al, but they just wouldn’t satisfy my inner control freak.
September 13th, 2009 at 7:52 am
I’ve got a breadmaker, a juicer, an ice cream maker and a George Foreman grill.
The last time I used any of them Jack Bauer was still married, Ian Somerhalder was still stuck on the island–alive and unvamped–and The Village Voice would never have run a 3 page article about a guy who doesn’t have the fucking skill to write a fucking email.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:09 am
I bake 75% of all bread eaten at home.
I work as a programmer and could not only handle, but also build a program to handle a blog (although I use Blogger’s :-D).
And I tell you, baking bread is much more fun, satisfying and less time consuming. And there are few things that can go wrong baking bread. At least you are likely to get a bread you can eat, perfect or not. One line of code wrong and you can’t use the program at all.
Although a fun comparison, I can’t really see what they have in common. :-)