I blog or should I say: I host my own blog? I don´t know. I started blogging more or less 20 years ago (during my time at the University of Applied Science). I started very small at blogger.com because I had no clue about CMS, it was free and it was kind of fancy to have a blog. I joined several blog communities to make people read what I had to say. I shared my ideas and my content with the world because in my point of view it was cool to do that. I actually can´t remember how many blogs I had in total, but in my “high phase,” I had 8 or 9 blogs at the same time. I had a new idea. Well, I created a new blog. Most of those blogs are gone for good. But some survived the test of time.
I remember pretty well the re:publica 2012 when Sasha Lobo called for a Renaissance of blogs. I was there when he fired up the crowd to have more blogs (sidenote: 90% of the audience had blogs at that time)
That was 10 years ago and a lot of things changed in those 10 years. YouTube, Twitch, and lately TikTok took over the web because there is where content creators of today can make their money. So what about Blogs in 2022? Are there still blogs or is everyone dancing to stupid dance challenges on TikTok?
Well, for me blogging was never something I planned to earn money with. I got some offers some years ago for my main blog to earn some Euros by posting some advertising content, but since I had no motivation to do all this legal stuff and I originally set this blog as a private blog from the beginning, I rejected those offers. I have a job so no need for these few bucks to take all the effort.
My 4 reasons why I blog:
My personal space on the web – King of my castle!
Owning a self-hosted blog was my kind of dream to have a space where “I m the king of the castle”. No one can force me to do anything that I don´t want to do. It s MY blog on MY server. You are always welcome to visit my space, I m happy for constructive criticism and I m always open to new ideas. BUT if you want to p** me off, I can delete any trace of your presence on my blog with a few clicks. THIS IS MY TOWN AND YOU PLAY BY MY RULES HERE! 😉
Share your know-how, don´t be selfish!
A lot of the stuff about tech I know today is because I read a lot of blogs. It´s people like me that like to share their points of view and their knowledge within their blogs. And it´s refreshing because this content is not created by some highly skilled writer but by someone that usually knows what he/she s talking about. And that´s one of my intentions as well, sharing some tips and tricks, some stuff I know, some tools I know. If there are a few people that find my content useful, I m happy 😉
Blog Inspirations
Learn more stuff about the web – good for your career
Another main reason why I blog is the fact that keeping up with today’s web technology. Especially when it comes to CMS. I love WordPress ever since and I´m a strong supporter of the WordPress CMS. That doesn´t mean that I never tested out other CMS. Drupal, Contenido, Typo3, and Joomla I tested them all. And every CMS has some ups and down. It always depends on the need, the time you are willing to invest and the knowledge you need to maintain the system. Back in the day, my main blog was a Typo3 CMS…but honestly, that was WAY TO MUCH CMS for a blog. That s something you should have if you run a business. But never the less, I enjoyed playing around with this massive CMS. This had some pretty nice site effects: I lost the fear of handling such systems. Most people when facing such large commercial CMS like Adobe CQ, Sitecore or SAP think “OMG, what the hell is this thing doing?” And yes…those backends can be quite confusing. But if you played around with smaller CMS you quickly realize that they “cook only with water” as well. CMS follows more or less a similar structure so if you get familiar, it´s not that complicated to get familiar with the big ones on the market.
But not only learning how to handle a CMS something I learned while hosting my blog, but everything that comes along with it like SEO for example. Most of the stuff I learned about SEO is something that I read and directly implemented into my Blog. And if you know all this stuff, it´s way easier to consult clients when you did it yourself what you try to sell. And clients recognize it when you know what you are talking about.
Be part of this 1% community, for a better (web world)
You know the rule of:
- 1% creates content
- 10% comment and interact with the content
- 89% just consume content
I like to be part of this 1% community. Esp. when it comes to the workshops and events, it is nice to talk to people sharing the same interest. It´s like a hobby, and a hobby get´s more fun if you share it with others. So hanging out with the “so-called” Net people can be pretty interesting. And since the web is flooded by AI-generated content bad stuff…I see people that create useful content as something essential in a world wide web that is more and more dominated by company content and restricted by more and more laws.
So why don´t you start a blog today? It´s really easy… easier than ever! I´m happy to give you a helping hand!
And if you are interested in my other blogs? Well, feel free to read them:
(DE)
(DE)
(EN)
Happy reading!
Photo by Fikret tozak on Unsplash
