To Build A Website, and Remain Invested

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I was surfing the MelonLand forums, looking for interesting topics to read, or even reply to, and then I noticed one I had once replied to late last year, where a user was asking how to stay invested in their own website. And I posted in reply, where I talked about how I was extending my website to make calls to a VPS in order to utilize Python to make it less “static.” But, that’s not really the best way to stay invested in maintaining your own personal website. You should stay invested, because, at the end of it all, and everything, and the oligarch-tech-complex that looms overhead, it could end up being the only place where you’re able to speak.

Sure, your provider, be it Github Pages, or some VPS maintainer, they could just … pull the rug and offline your site in the blink of an eye. But, guess what! You’re smart. You build your website on your local machine, and then upload it to your server. So, you didn’t lose anything. You won’t lose anything, ever.

Think about how Twitter was overtaken, and maybe you said goodbye, and you deleted your account. A decade of your internet history, wiped clean from the internet. Think about going to Threads, and finding out Zuck is even more of an asshole than you thought he was, and so you left. Now you’ve joined Bluesky, or Mastodon. On Bluesky, what if some control-freak crypto-company buys the app, and then wipes your data? Or, something to that effect? What if you’re on Mastodon, and you take a break from social media, and then return, and the server you were on is gone?

Well, so’s your data, and your internet history, and all the work you’ve done.

This is not a criticism of ActivityPub, by the way. Maintaining community owned social media comes with some risks, and you should be prepared, by having the bulk of your work, and words, and thoughts, on a website of your own.

It doesn’t have to be flashy. It doesn’t have to look like it was developed by some 50-years-of-experience web developer. It just has to be yours.

Build, something, and then start jotting down your thoughts. Put up slashpages, and share your work, share your interests, share, yourself. And when you’re done doing all of that, keep on writing. Make new posts, put them in their own pages, share those pages to Mastodon, or Bluesky, or, wherever you are.

Speak your mind, and say whatever-the-fuck you want, because if you own the slate, it cannot be smashed by adult toddlers who want to take away everyone’s toys.

You want to know how to stay invested in maintaining your own website?

Make your website the central communication and sharing platform, that’s all about you, that you own.

You do that, and you’ll never stop messing with it.