I run some lightweight privacy-respecting self-hosted analytics for my blog, so I know what my most popular posts were in 2024. It's hardly surprising that many of these were also published last year, but they include one from 2013 and another from 2018. Having a quick peek at my stats reminded me that the blog content that is most appreciated, shared and read is often not what you might think and some posts retain value over time. My most popular posts last year include a couple of write-ups of conferences I attended, a conference talk I gave, a highly personal reflection on the biggest single-day wave of people moving from Twitter to Mastodon (which is far and away the most-read blog post I've ever written), as well as a few technical descriptions of how to do specific things, and a post I wrote 11 years ago about 3D printers.
What I personally appreciate a great deal is blog posts outlining exactly how some technical thing works, or a step by step description of how someone did something. This also happens to be some of the most consistently popular content on my own blog - the top post last year is something of no relevance to my day job and about a topic I am not really an expert in. But it explains step by step how I did something that a lot of people want to know how to do, so it's useful to the world.
I want to read more stuff like this - helpful tips from human beings who aren't trying to sell anything and aren't just posting to get a cheap reaction on social media. You should get a blog.
I don't know what to write about
The great thing about having your own blog is that there are no rules you can write about whatever you want. I started off mostly throwing my uninformed opinions about librarianship into the void, but over the years I've written a lot of different things, just as the list above shows.
Liam's blog was originally a food blog but is now quite eclectic: brief commentary on the New South Wales planning scheme, observations about how emergency management differs between countries, notes about what he's reading, and the occasional nori roll recipe.
Ed mostly posts about technology but sometimes shares a whimsical photograph.
Julia specialises in incredibly detailed explanations of how various computer things work but sometimes she'll post about crochet patterns or how to write zines.
Jessamyn writes about whatever is on her mind which could mostly be described as "libraries and open culture" but covers a lot of ground.
Nobody would be interested in anything I have to say
Are things interesting to you? Did you learn something today? Congratulations, you have something to write about that will be interesting to someone else. I've written blog posts that I thought were well crafted and interesting, and have hardly any views. I've bashed out some half-arsed thoughts off the top of my head, and they've ended up being the most popular things I've ever published. Who knows, man? Just try not to defame anyone, and then put it out there.
I don't have time to blog regularly
Either do I, that's why I don't publish posts regularly. The same rule applies here as for what to write about - there are no rules! Liam publishes nothing for months, and then pumps out four posts in a week. I've had wildly different posting schedules over the years. Adam Mastroianni would rather trash his draft and publish nothing than post something he's not happy with just to keep a schedule. Ashley published one post a week for 39 weeks and then took five months off.
I'm worried big tech will steal my work for their AI
Ten years ago I wrote about how I got over my fears about my blog posts being used for corporate profit. I think the same applies to LLMs, even though they don't attribute their sources. If writing is how you make your livelihood then different rules apply.
I already post on Facebook/LinkedIn/Mastodon
Great, I can't read it on Facebook or LinkedIn, because they're enclosed spaces that require a login to read them. This is also why I strongly urge against using something like Medium, which isn't really a blogging platform since it requires logging in to read posts. Mastodon and other fediverse software and platforms are better, but they're not blogs. You think differently when you're posting longer form content, using a platform that's designed for that.
Ok I'm convinced! How do I get a blog?
I recommend something that provides
- easy publishing and editing functionality
- RSS/Atom so people can subscribe without requiring you to use an email service
- a reading experience that isn't interrupted by advertising
All the suggestions below offer these.
This is not actually necessary, but I strongly suggest you set up your own domain name (e.g. example.com) and set it to auto-renew so you don't accidentally lose it. Some webhosts provide domain registration as well, or you can do it separately. Somewhere like Gandi will get you started. Don't use GoDaddy.
Once you've done that, it all depends on how you prefer to do things, and what your budget is. Earlier this week I asked my Mastodon bubble for suggestions for first-time bloggers - thanks to everyone for your suggestions!
If you can't be bothered reading everything below or it's too hard to decide, get a WordPress blog with Reclaim Hosting.
I just want to throw a normal file into Google Drive or Dropbox and have it magically turn into a blog post
USD$5 per month
I haven't used this myself, but Blot might be exactly what you're looking for. The demo on the website looks pretty impressive to me, and the price is attractive. You can use your own custom domain with Blot and it is fully managed for you. Once you've configured Blot, you publish by adding files and folders to a synced folder in Google Drive, Dropbox, or a Git repository, so you can use an application you already know to actually write your content, like MS Word or your favourite text editor.
I like the idea of hacking my own HTML file but don't care about having my own domain name
FREE
If you're too young to remember Geocities, or old enough and are still mourning its demise, then Neocities might be for you. Neocities is designed to be the 2020s version of Geocities: you write raw HTML and the example sites look kinda out there and glitchy because that's the point.
I want to use something with a WYSIWYG interface and a lot of support options
~AUD$5-$20 per month
A lot of people recommended hosted WordPress as the best option for most people. See my note further down about WordPress.com and why I do not recommend WordPress.com as a host. Whilst at the time of writing you may hear that "the WordPress world is in turmoil right now", the reality is that this is extremely unlikely to impact most owners of hosted WordPress sites: the argument is within the WordPress developer community and however it is resolved, it's in everyone's interest for WordPress users to barely notice and it's a piece of openly-licensed software rather than a platform that can just be switched off.
Reclaim Hosting comes highly recommended by many people over time. They're focussed on higher education in the USA but anyone can sign up for a personal plan at very attractive pricing. This is probably the best option for most people.
If you want something based in Australia with local support, a couple of different people recommended VentraIP. This will be more expensive than Reclaim even after accounting for currency exchange rates.
There are many other options - look for "Hosted WordPress". Generally what you get is "shared hosting" with "CPanel", which means your blog will be in a separated section of a web server also hosting several other websites, and you can use a web interface to configure things like the domain you use for your blog. Your chosen host will usually have good documentation on how to get set up.
I want to write in markdown and then press publish
USD$9 per month
Ghost was originally a Kickstarter project by a former WordPress core developer, but has developed quickly from there. Ghost can be used for both websites (e.g. 404 Media) and newsletters (e.g. Mita Williams' University of Winds). Ghost takes the clean and simple markdown-based approach of static site generators but removes all the nerdy futzing so it's more like the WordPress experience. Indeed whilst writing in markdown was originally the only way to use Ghost, it now offers a rich WYSIWYG writing interface as well, so you can compare Ghost and hosted WordPress to see which one you prefer. I published this blog using self-hosted Ghost for a while.
...but I don't want to pay for it
FREE
Publii is an open source static site generator (see below for more on this), but you can connect it to a free GitHub or GitLab Pages account to publish. Interestingly, publishing and configuring Publii works as a desktop application rather than a web interface, which is a little different to most of the options listed here and makes it a lot simpler for normal people than a commandline based system like I describe below.
Blogger is a free service from Google. It's quite bare-bones and really geared towards posting content to attract people to view ads where you share the revenue with Google, so the primary use of Blogger is by spam-blogs. As a Google product you also never know when it will join the Google graveyard. But if you're looking for something basic and free, Blogger was nominated by a couple of people in my unscientific survey, and you will be joining successful and interesting bloggers like Aaron Tay.
I need a frustrating hobby
FREE to ~ $USD10
If you're keen to have more control, you can look into using a static site generator (SSG). An SSG is essentially a commandline script that takes a bunch of input files and outputs a website - HTML files in directories, with all the relevant images, CSS and JavaScript and everything pointing to the right place. Different SSGs use different templating languages, but pretty much all of them use markdown in the page content file and convert it into HTML using an appropriate template.
My blog is made using Zola, but I've previously used Eleventy. To publish with an SSG you either need to use GitLab Pages (which works with most SSGs) or GitHub Pages (which only works with the Jekyll SSG); or have control over some space on some kind of webserver - either shared hosting (something with CPanel), or a standalone virtual private server (VPS). There's a bit of technical work involved to publish this way, so it's not surprising that a great many blogs published with SSGs start off with a couple of posts about how they set up their blog, and sometimes end there. If you want to procrastinate with your SSG setup instead of writing blog posts, this could be a great choice.
Why didn't you recommend the services I've heard of?
The WordPress world is currently experiencing some difficulties, after one of the original creators of WordPress, and owner of WordPress.com, Matt Mullenweg, seems to have taken leave of his senses. His behaviour has been so erratic over the last month that I cannot recommend using his company (WordPress.com/Automattic) to host your blog. I probably wouldn't have recommended this anyway, as I think Automattic is pretty aggressive at upselling to unsuspecting new users. Since the WordPress software is openly licensed, anyone else can use it and provide hosting for you, as I outlined above. The software itself is very robust and several of the other software options I suggest provide exports using the WordPress XML export standard.
Wix is the Yahoo Mail of blogging platforms, with a laggy, busy interface that is constantly upselling to you. It also doesn't provide an export function - if you start a Wix site you're essentially stuck paying Wix until they go bankrupt and your blog is deleted forever.
Squarespace was recommended to me as a good option that "just works" when I asked for suggestions on Mastodon. Squarespace does provide exports using the WordPress xml standard. At AUD$16 per month I don't consider Squarespace a good deal compared to the nearest alternative of hosted WordPress - it's not open source so the only host you can use for a Squarespace blog is Squarespace (although you can export your blog in the WordPress XML format to take it somewhere else). You're also at the mercy of Squarespace's corporate strategy.
What next?
Once you've set up your blog, you can add it to the list at ausglamr.newcardigan.org. Then every time you publish a blog post, it will be shared with the GLAMR world. You can add certain tags to your post if you don't want a particular post to be added to the Aus GLAMR feed.
Now get blogging!