It seems every few years or so I get tired of whatever blogging or content management system I’ve been using and I try something else. And, of course, every time I do it, I swear this is the last time I’m doing this.
And yet I do it. Again and again and again. I’ve actually lost track of everything I’ve tried, but it included the ever popular WordPress and I’m even using Jekyll for my main phoneboy.com site because it gave me the most control with the least server overhead.
But it sucks, it all does. And quite frankly, I have better things to do with my time than to try and move things between various content management systems, which have all sucked in various ways.
Ignoring the content management systems themselves for a moment, let’s also look at the cost. Sure there are “free” services out there, but do you want someone else’s ads all over your content? Do you trust that company will be around in a few years? Do you trust what that company might do with your data?
And while I’m thinking of conventional blog-like content, I’m also thinking of microblogging content. I’ve put quite a lot of data into Twitter and App.Net over the last several years. Who knows how Twitter will change their Terms of Service or their public API to the point where I’ll even want to use the service anymore. And App.Net? It was a nice idea but, sadly, the lights may still be on there, but it’s hard to know if anyone’s home or not.
And Facebook? I don’t even know what to say there, but I’ve given up trying to manage my privacy settings on Facebook. I just assume everything I post there is public. I also try and post as little content there as possible, as I know it’s basically a roach motel.
Basically, I’m tired of it all. I just want to put all my stuff in one place, have it go everywhere everyone else is, and at the end of day, know that I have control over the original copy of said content and actually own it, unlike with the other services, that is not entirely clear.
Have you heard of 10Centuries? Unless you’ve been on App.Net, you’ve probably never heard of it. The mission of 10Centuries is simple: “ensuring all of our content is readily available and readable by future generations.” And no ads. Ever. Those are principles I can get behind.
Will it last 10 centuries as the name implies? Who knows. I know nothing lasts forever, especially anything that man makes. But I gotta respect someone with the gumption to try.
10Centuries will handle most of my blogging needs for the time being, which are pretty meager. What about the social networks? Version 3 of 10Centuries will hopefully solve some of those pain points once released. Meanwhile, I can import all my Twitter and App.Net stuff so it’s searchable on this site.
Hopefully, in a few days, most of the blogs I have on Posthaven will move over to 10Centuries. I have a couple of other, static websites that are not appropriate for 10 Centuries. I opted to move those off of Dreamhost and onto 123systems, which has a reasonably cheap CPanel type hosting setup for websites and email as well as a virtual private system which will host phoneboy.com. Amazon will be my backup solution of choice, mostly because of the pricing on Glacier, but the flexibility of S3 is also a bonus.
So I guess I’m not going all in with 10Centuries, but I’m certainly consolidating and 10Centuries is part of my plan.
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