Tag: Imported Post

Originally posted somewhere else (ex. a blog I don’t use anymore, or a social networking site) and moved here sometime later. Usually keeping the original posting date.

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I’ve been thinking about what it means to self-host a service, and that there are degrees even within that.

I have a self-hosted WordPress blog in the sense that I manage an installation of WordPress, but I run it on a VPS at a web host. It’s not as self-hosted as someone running a server on a Lollipop Cloud or FreedomBox, but it’s more self-hosted than someone using WordPress.com. It’s also more self-hosted than someone using the managed WordPress hosting at the same web host.

The key advantages of self-hosting are privacy and control. Unless a service uses end-to-end encryption, the admins at each level can probably read your stuff – you have to trust that they won’t do it unless they have to.

And of course when you run your own service, you don’t have to fear losing control when Google Plus shuts down, or Flickr changes their pricing structure, or Tumblr changes their TOS, or MySpace botches a server migration.

The obvious disadvantage of self-hosting, of course, is that you’re on the hook for all the maintenance. Spam filtering, moderation, security updates, server migrations – those are all on you.

And unless you’re using your own software, even on your own box there’s still the risk that a project is going to shut down & leave you without security fixes, or pivot to a new direction that no longer fits what you want. (So glad WP’s block editor is still optional!)

I’ve settled on a balance where I manage the top-level web apps, but my webhost handles the hardware, the virtualization and the LAMP stack. (And email. Ugh, I’d forgotten how much of a pain a mailserver can be to handle until I tried to set one up on a Raspberry Pi a couple of months ago.)

I guess I’m kind of splitting the difference. 🤷

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Purism’s explanations for removing various safety features from Librem One’s social network sound like someone explaining why they removed the mirrors, brakes, horns, seat belts, airbags and signals from the cars they’re reselling, because they know those cars are only ever going to be driven on a track where they’ll never have to change lanes or negotiate with other drivers.

Even though there’s a bunch of driveways on that track, connecting to the public road system.

If a collision does happen, we can call in the tow trucks and ambulances. But giving drivers tools to avoid collisions or reduce injuries? That would be interfering with their freedom!

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What’s the minimum viable blog feature set these days?

  • Rich text posts (output; the source can be anything)
  • Titles
  • Permalinks
  • Tags/categories
  • Navigation
  • RSS feed
  • Images hosted locally
  • Media embed (remote or local?)
  • Author info for multi-author blogs

I won’t back down on RSS/Atom, because there’s SO MUCH you and subscribers can do with it.

I also think images should to be built-in and not something you bolt on clumsily afterward.

Not sure if I’d consider comments part of the base level.

What else am I missing?

Candidate Software

Looking for something lighter weight than WordPress.

The last time I tried Plume and WriteFreely, they didn’t support images, though IIRC you could embed remote images in at least one.

Static site generators I’ve tried like Jekyll require you to bolt on separate commenting systems like Disqus, or jump through hoops to roll your own in a way that will re-generate the site when someone comments…and you still have to reinvent spam filtering.

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Guys, “Check your privilege” isn’t a moral judgment against you, it’s a reminder that we all have blind spots.

The human brain is very good at downplaying or dismissing problems that we don’t see much ourselves to focus more energy on those that we do. It’s the same psychology that makes Douglas Adams’ “Somebody Else’s Problem Field” work in his books and ring true to the reader.

We all do this.

The statement is just to remind us that we need to try to push through that SEP field to really look at what’s behind it.