How to start a blog

I'm starting a webring with some friends called the Combo Crew, so I put together this guide on how to start a blog and connect it to the ring.

1. Getting a website running

To start out, let's clarify something about running a website. There are two things that must happen for a website to appear on the Internet: first, you must have your website hosted somewhere (i.e., a publicly-accessible server on the Internet stores your content). Second, there must be a domain name like google.com or tilde.club that is registered and points to wherever your site is hosted.

It's not necessary to spend money to do either of these things. There are many services that will offer free hosting for your website if your website is static and only serves content like images and text and does not involve any server-side scripting. Many of these sites will also give you a free subdomain for your site. For example, GitHub Pages hosts many static sites that look like <something>.github.io - take a look at netflix.github.io. If you want something that looks like example.com, you need to buy a domain name. Buying and registering a domain name is going to be out of scope for this blog post, but know that it costs about $12-$20 USD/year, though having a domain name allows your identity and site to be independent of any specific host if you want to swap around.

Now, that's all great, but how do you actually go about building your website? Here, you have a couple options depending on your website host. If you want to avoid messing with HTML or CSS, go with a blog host that allows you to post using a graphical interface. I recommend looking at bearblog.dev or i.haza.website. Wordpress.com and blogger.com are some of the big names in blogging software, too. Substack can even work as a blog. Just note that some of these more user-friendly options lock some options behind a paywall, such as connecting your site to a registered domain name.

If you want a bit more control over your site and how it looks, I recommend looking into static site generators like Eleventy and Jekyll. These are programs that build your site by Markdown posts with reusable templates. There are endless, beautiful templates that people have created for you to use, along with great tutorials. This option can, however, be a bit more technical - though AI can help clarify how to use or generate templates. If you don't know how to use GitHub or a command line, it's probably best to avoid these for now.

tl;dr - Find a free blog host that uses a graphical interface. I like bearblog.dev.

2. Connecting to the blogosphere

In my opinion, your website is not a blog until you give people a way to follow your blog. In the blogosphere, the most common solution is something called an RSS feed or an Atom feed. These are sidecar files that list all of your posts and some important metadata. Software called feed readers can poll all of the feeds that you follow and provide you with all of the most recent updates. RSS/Atom feeds are decentralized, unlike social media. These feeds are usually indicated by a syndication symbol:

Usually, whatever software you are using to write a blog will generate an RSS feed or Atom feed automatically, and it should have the link somewhere on the front page. Usually, the feed is stored at example.com/feed.xml or something similar. If you are using a blogging software with a graphical interface, check the documentation to make sure they provide a feed. If you are using a static site generator, typically a plugin will generate a feed for you. People follow your blog by putting the link to the feed into their feed reader. If you want to try following blogs using a feed reader, I've used Feedly and Fluent Reader.

Another cool way of connecting with the blogosphere is connecting to a webring. These were popular back on the early Internet, and it's basically just a linked list of sites on a related topic. They are becoming increasingly popular again as people reconnect with personal websites. For example, check out all of the webrings on this aggregator.

By way of example, the Combo Crew has an invite-only webring. To join the webring, you put this HTML code somewhere on your front page. Replace the ?via= to a url-encoded version of your URL:

<center>
<!-- Begin Combo Crew Webring Badge -->
<a href="https://webri.ng/webring/combocrew/next?via=https%3A%2F%2Ftilde.club%2F~twinbfield">
<img src="https://tilde.club/~twinbfield/assets/combo_crew_88x31_blue.png" border="0" width="88" height="31" alt="Combo Crew Webring" />
</a>
<!-- End Combo Crew Webring Badge -->
</center>

(You can replace the color on the PNG link. Options are red, orange, yellow, darkgreen, lightgreen, blue, pink, and purple.)

Then, message me the URL of your site, and I'll add it to the webring. The 88x31 button should take you to the next site in the webring.

tl;dr - Make sure you have a link to an RSS or Atom feed so people can follow your blog.

3. What's next?

Now, you can post! For Combo Crew specifically, we're looking at starting something like a blog carnival, where someone hosts a theme and writes a summary post aggregating (and linking to) the individual blog posts. Consider adding top-level pages like an "About" page or an "Interests" page to orient people on your site. Link to other videos, sites, and posts you like with a blogroll.

If you are technically inclined, you may enjoy tinkering with your website. For example, you may want to add a comment system if your blog does not already support it (see Giscus and Webmentions for ideas). The IndieWeb has tons of ideas on how to use your site as your online identity. For example, you can use Bridgy and Bridgy Fed to have posts from your site automatically syndicated out to social media and pull comments/likes back in to your site.

There's also some more niche and lively communities to explore. For example, tilde.club where this site is hosted, is what's called a pubnix, meaning the community exists on a shared Unix server. Pubnixes typically offer free web hosting along with different protocols like Gemini and Gopher, and the ability to do some light server-side scripting. Some tilde-style pubnixes offer open sign-ups, while others like sdf.org and freeshell.de require verification by physically mailing something to an address. There's also Neocities and 32bit.cafe that aim to support people in creating personal websites, often with very artistic and retro theming.

tl;dr - Post! Tinker! Explore! Decorate! Design! Build the web you want to see!