I’ve decided to switch back to WordPress. This was based on the strength of 2 plugins I really want to be using again: “Friends” and “ActivityPub”.
i miss the connection to other people and the interactions I used to have off of the back of some of my posts and gaming photos.
I’m still finding inline styles in old posts from my time with WordPress and it’s guttenberg editor. I like the idea of the guttenberg editor, but gosh if it doesnt bloat the fuck out of your html.
I’m now on ClassicPress which is WordPress, if WordPress hadnt gone down the swanny.
The standard way nowadays, to share a video online, is to post an embed link to youtube.
This then displays that video in what’s called an iframe — an embedded website within the website you are on.
What this allows youtube and parent company alphabet (read: google) to do, is to track you whilst on that website.
I want my website to be a bastion of the once-person-centric web. When people would share things on their own websites because they enjoyed it and wanted to share it with other humans.
So to ensure that I don’t subject my visitors to any tracking, I choose to download any videos I wish to share and then manually upload them to my own site.
When you watch a video on my website, it actually is from my own website.
A novel idea I know.
It’s how it used to be, and it’s how it should be.
I am also putting a note beneath each video to show what size the video is in megabytes (mb).
My site shouldn’t preload the video — it will only start downloading it once you press the play button.
I recommend just waiting till you’re on a wifi connection. Nothing I’m sharing can’t wait till later.
Enjoy the fresh air whilst you’re out.
I may still have some very old posts in my archive that have historic youtube links in them. Yes, I did it once too.
But I am endeavouring to get rid of those and replace them with self-hosted versions where possible.
No. I’m not gonna rebuild my website core. But i think I’m gonna try to build my own classic theme, based loosely on an old version of my site.
Could be fun?
The urge to completely redesign and rebuild my website again has once again entered my mind.
Send help.
Also: should I?
I’m considering doing a regular post on a Friday called something like the “Friday Five”.
Where I will endeavour to have listened to five new albums that week and write up my thoughts on them.
Inspired by The Sunday Six by Christian’s Music Musings.
Decided to go back to WordPress from ClassicPress.
Let’s see how this goes.
I’ve decided to bring my website back to a traditional website without all of the “social gubbins”.
I love the IndieWeb, but I just can’t be bothered to jump through the hoops of marking up the posts with the extra classes and fiddling with my theme to make sure other sites can parse it fully.
And the Fediverse. The fediverse is great. It feels like a last ditch effort at having some kind of nice social interactions online. Without all the capitalist bullshit and “influenzers”. (Yes I intentionally spelt it that way)
But I don’t want my website connected to it anymore. I dont want all my posts going out and getting saved in other peoples servers, regardless of how trusted they may be. Especially now big tech is hustling in on the fediverse game.
So this is all there is. A single website, built on ClassicPress, with basically no plugins, with me as the sole author. The author who does not use AI in any stage of this website, or any other website for that matter.
Just me, myself and I. And any of you lovely people who pop by and visit.
Unless you’re a fascist. In which case you can fuck off.
Tata.
My website (this website) does not track you in any way.
I have even disabled access logging in my server config.
Until today I did use Matomo, which was self-hosted. But then I came to the conclusion that I just don’t need it.
At the same time I both care about the people who visit my website — unless you are a fascist — and don’t care who visits my site.
The one thing keeping me from migrating from WordPress to ClassicPress is the excellent ActivityPub plugin.
Its great, but i wish i had the time to port all the broken parts to the ClassicPress way of doing things i.e. the WP things that have changed since 4.9
Remember when websites used to be just websites?
Just a little site for someone to call their own.
It didn’t matter if people visited or not — it was there because the person creating it had a desire to build and maintain it.
And yes, I said “Person”. NOT “user”.
Websites didn’t have to be “socially connected” and posting back and forth with APIs and messages. Don’t get me wrong – I think the indieweb and activitypub are nice things. But I can’t help but yern for a simpler time.
(Yes my website posts are discoverable via activitypub) But I’m now only interested in sending out one way (as opposed to following loads of people and scrolling just as I would on twitter et al.
I will still welcome friendly comments and will also reply where possible.
I’m sick of scrolling. And I’m sick of “consuming”, as the marketing/bullshit “influencers” would have you call it.
I just want a little website where I post my thoughts; my ideas; my observations; my peeves.
Whoever comes around, I welcome you with open arms. Unless you are either an LLM training scraper or a fascist, in which case you can FUCK THE HELL OFF. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE.
love to the humans out there.
Hmm. Seems that when my posts appear in fediverse, I am hit with that Ddos effect off all connected instances requesting my page at the same time.
This may only be for posts with images attached so I’m going to try and switch to using a plugin to offload my media on to Digital Ocean spaces.
Will report back.
