I must admit when I opted for using Posterous as a blog platform for this adventure, like may other people, the ease factor really swayed me. That and the email thing. I know it´s not cool to admit it, but I do use email still. Don´t you?
And let´s be clear, sometimes the choice that come with total publishing control can be overwhelming.
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Yes, I maybe able to do so much more on a hosted WordPress blog, I hear you – pimp it out to the nth degree, adsense here and there, feeds of every flavour, and an array of embedding and mashups galore, hey even get under the hood as a wannabe php ninja, but at the end of the day all the effort of perpertual configuration, modding, widegitising and tweaking a hosted blog just detracts from the core purpose of blogging in itself – that of devising and publishing your thoughts.
There is so much choice of blogging platforms these days, and especially given the ability to use domain aliasing on so many of them, that it´s worth considering if the gain of all that finite control and fiddling from a self hosted setup is really worth it, even if you depend on a developer, a webmaster dare I say it. It´s got to be quick and easy. Some say, they are even more easy options to blog than Posterous.
After all this is the attention deficit decade right, and if you are still reading this far, you are probably among the few – thank you for your attention so far, hear me out.
There is a trend towards simplification, at least in presentation, in many web services, and it´s noticeable how many of the leading web apps themselves genuflect to 3rd party blog services, in recognition of the single track mind brilliance of these platforms.
I´ve heard these platforms being labelled as mini-blogs, however the flexibility of this evolved breed of blog platforms allows easier integration with your social presence with autoposting left, right and centre with a one-time click of a tick box. And that same flexibility allows people to produce more creative ways to harness them. Can you use them to compliment your hub? Of course, but maybe they are your hub.
The chief social media officer at Mullen, Edward Boches, ingeniously uses the mini blog approach here to contain his comments which merit more than 140 words and those expanded comments as mini blog entries earn a short url reference which is then sent out via his twitter stream. That´s big thinking in a so called mini platform.
So you want total control your blog and don´t want to get sucked in to the fremium thing with monthly subscriptions? OK, just make sure when you do your ROI calculations, you include all those hours of impossible to predict upgrade headaches, plugin conflicts, security patching, server this and thats etc. It´s not about cost, it´s about value, and your time is valuable right?
It evokes memories of yesteryear for me of hearing those yearnings of “I want to run my own email server..” – sure go ahead, I´ll stick to Gmail or whatever and get on with emailing while you toil away in your vortex of spam. Horses for courses, swings and roundabouts, yada yada yada.
Next time you need to select a blogging platform, be it for you or your client, bear in mind this core tenet of blogging as reinforced in this video.
And that is from a respected WordPress theme framework developer wearing the scars of tweak fatigue.
So you are still thinking through the options for your next blog setup? Just think it through carefully: that´s free to do, but by not doing it, it could cost you.
Of course, there is a nuanced counter argument to this, and I´m all up for hearing your take on it.
What do you think? Easy choice?