Life is funny.

I could stop there (and I should). But quitting a blog after one post is just so 1999. I haven’t quit a blog after barely trying since I quit that one blog in 2002.

And 2006.

And 2007.

Maybe some 2008. Alright, I quit blogging a lot. But I digress.

I read, somewhere, that people will sign up for a blogging service, post once, then abandon it. Some people [ahem] go to great lengths to create beautiful, rich, deep websites only to abandon them. Some people just don’t have staying power.

A blogging friend of mine told me he was quitting not only ‘the blogs’, but commenting, tracking, and reading. While that was somewhat depressing, it showed me that I’ve been working entirely too hard at this. So I decided to quit.

Again.

Open Trackbacks

In 2005, I had this happening little .Org (not this .org). The comments rolled, and the links were plentiful. Replete with blog–love, I grew fascinated with the idea that I could grow an audience in such a new form of communication.

Blogging became an obsession. A pastime. A thing to do.

While gaining an audience, I lost the fun of doing what I loved best: tinkering with the innards. As the site views increased, so my tactics changed from doing something that was more like ornamental gardening to something like link–whoring. I was link–whoring.

As a link–whore, I spent many minutes of my day, begging for links page views. The worst was the begging for — and reception of — trackbacks. A simple Google search for Open Trackback Carnivals have a disturbing number of results. Any number over 0 would be disturbing.

But there I was, in 2005, makin’ bacon. On the blogs. Open Trackback blogs.

I even put together a version of Textpattern together that accepted trackbacks. I thought it was quite a feat (especially translating the German). However, it was more expanding on my folly than impressing anybody. I was just putting lipstick on a pig. Not that Textpattern’s a pig — just the opposite: selling out for hits is the problem.

My ornamental garden became a sense of pride. And self–worth. And German lessons.

Time is a fickle mistress, though. Those people who loved me so much for a season found other diversions. Then left those diversion for other diversions. And I lost whatever I thought I had, and never really had a chance to keep.

On Textpattern

It was an article I found on one of the Apple–related blogs that led me to Textpattern. As I was new to content management systems, I was looking for not only one that was free, but one that was actually worth a darn. I didn’t pay much attention to Movable Type (what with its scary licensing information) and though WordPress was just too messed up.

With the stunningly small, much–much–much–better–than–Mambo Texpattern, I could actually care less about making post work, and I could concentrate on making posts. And the community, while not large or vociferous, would churn out a plugin just about the time you needed one. Back then the WordPress community was not like it is now, and that kind of response was relatively unheard of. I don’t think the Movable Type community has ever been all that large.

Hacking away in obscurity, I would add something new weekly. Not really posting, but extending the engine. And while hacking away at the engine, my coding prowess grew. Both with HTML and CSS, I happily whiled my free time away, writing and rewriting the source code.

That’s what I really enjoy. Just the pleasure of making things work. I always wanted to figure out just how minimal I can make a site. Just how little I could put together, and still have it all make sense. There’s a quote attributed to Albert Einstein that goes, Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

So that’s what I‘m doing here. On my 2005–era Power Mac G5, with my 2004–era Logitec keyboard, my 2006–era Microsoft mouse, and my 1996–era feeble brain. Plus, a server that’s powerful enough to take anything that Slashdot, Digg, or anybody short of Google’s home page can throw at it.

Not that that’s ever going to happen.

On endless posts from bloggers

The reason I love Textpattern is because it takes you mind off creating something beautiful ‘inside the chrome’. What the ‘chrome’ in this instance is describes the interface you write in. Without some sort of plugin or hack, you have to write your post in plain text. You add the appropriate HTML tags for bolded and italicized text on your own. You need to think about what it will look like before it’s published.

For young writers, this is a very good thing. Because, for as good as you think you sound, it’s always good to go back and have somebody read what you’ve written. Because sometimes that very thing you’ve written is just 1,000 words of meaningless gibberish (c.f. this page). If you can somehow write something that engages people, they will want to read you again. Bore them, and never expect them again.

I use a text editor that allows me to see how the page looks, and most of the time I edit the line so that there aren’t large gaps in the sentences, or there is no widowed text. This is not a good habit, as it cuts off the natural flow of my ideas. Streams of consciousness dry up when you’re trying to think of a synonym of ‘superfluous’.

Ignoring my bad habit for a moment, the Textpattern chrome encourages that idea of writing then correcting. Editing is important, but the central concept — the reason you started blogging in the first place — is that idea you need to share with the world. Over the years, I cared more about being read than writing something worth reading.

Thus, I am here. Writing this. About me.

Hi, my name is John

I have things I want to tell you. Some you’ll find interesting, others you won’t. But I’m not writing this just to hear myself type.

My name is John, and I want you to read this.

status: published
lastmod: '2008-12-18T12:12:29.000Z'
excerpt: It takes a village to build a website. And by “village” I mean “a bunch of talented people who are smarter than me.”
author: meadowhill login
cms: textpattern
custom:
  section: articles
  custom_1: john+stansbury meadow+hill blogging writing textpattern