My own blog/website is now 22 years old! It began in my university dorm room, though back then, it wasn't really a blog. Instead, it was just a loose collection of pages. I added a blog to it much later when blogging became fashionable. I still update my website occasionally [1].<p>Back in 2001, a chance encounter with Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS) on a Windows 98 system introduced me to the client-server concepts essential for creating and hosting a website. I used PWS to serve my website for the first couple of years and then moved on to IIS. At first the web pages were just individual HTML pages loaded within an HTML frameset. The frameset presented common headers and sidebars for the website. Later I learnt to use ASP (the classic ASP) and add dynamic content such as quiz, guestbook, etc.<p>By the final year of my university days, I had gained sufficient Unix/Linux knowledge to confidently replace Windows with Linux, IIS with Apache, and ASP with PHP.<p>These days, I am serving my website using Nginx from a Linode VM running Debian stable. The website itself is generated statically using my own little Common Lisp program [2]. All of the content and layout is simple handwritten HTML. The Common Lisp program combines the content HTML with the layout HTML and writes the final HTML pages that are then served via Nginx.<p>[1] <a href="https://susam.net/" rel="nofollow">https://susam.net/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/susam/susam.net">https://github.com/susam/susam.net</a>
I've been blogging on wordpress.com since 2006 and think writing for the Internet still underrated (a point Patrick Collison and many others have also made). At some point I got a custom domain, which I then thought I'd renewed but hadn't (ambiguous emails from Wordpress) and switched to a different custom domain.<p>I see a lot of complaints, often justified, about the dominance of the big social media companies, but not nearly as many people deciding to go their own, off those sites.
Always nice to hear of people who have been blogging for a long time. I myself have been blogging (not always very seriously) for more than 29 years. First from a '~/home' directory of the University I was working at, later I moved to my own domain [1]. The first entry is from February 1995, but it also has contents from before that date.<p>I am still writing HTML (with some JavaScript) using a modified version of Crystal Edit, which has the ability open local files by following HTML links [2]. (So, it act like a kind of HTML source browser.) I am using a C program to check HTML and links [3], which also places all updated files in an upload directory.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.iwriteiam.nl/" rel="nofollow">https://www.iwriteiam.nl/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.iwriteiam.nl/MySample.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.iwriteiam.nl/MySample.html</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.iwriteiam.nl/chkhtml_c.txt" rel="nofollow">https://www.iwriteiam.nl/chkhtml_c.txt</a>
<i>"Because I couldn't find any other blog software, I decided to write my own."</i><p>Famous last words of a blogger.<p>I didn't want to fall into that trap and started with a blogging service right away.<p>3 years after I started blogging as a new years resolution, it became my main source of income.<p>Wouldn't have thought that I, the dude who almost dropped out of HS because of his bad English, would work as a writer one day.
27 years for me. Started with FrontPage 1997, with extensions for Apache on Linux! Then I wrote a PHP site with Smarty. Then I wrote a Rails app. Then I moved to Wordpress. Given that I've done another 15 years writing Rails apps, I should rewrite it in the new Rails 7/8.<p>Because I use a ton of 3rd-party JS libraries which don't work well with Turbo, I'm kind of stuck with Rails 6 with turbolinks disabled on my main project. I've been looking for some reason to get to grips with the new additions, and I think I just talked myself into it.
I'm at 16 years. It's been through multiple iterations - a Django site, hosted on GitHub Pages, etc. Today it's a simple static site generated by blogdown/Hugo. MathJax is a godsend - I use a <i>lot</i> of LaTeX formatted equations. Biggest pain was search. I tried Algolia, but am currently doing a very simple client-side search.<p>I'd be very interested in people's blog stacks or if they have recommendations similar to the above.
A couple random thoughts.<p>20 years is a long time makes me wonder what the next 20 years of blogging/websites will look like.<p>As beginner in web development I'm jealous of the simplicity of web development described at the beginning of the post.<p>Finally I've held off on putting comments/a guestbook on my website for the same reasons. I don't think I have even close to enough traffic for it to be a issue but if it ends up being one I don't want to deal with it.
> Getting a Perl website running has always been a challenge.<p>What am I missing? Getting Movable Type working was to FTP and dropping it in "cgi-bin" > making them executable > connecting to the DB you created. Every web host that runs Apache has that, doesn't it?<p>I've started and sold a few blogs - the Pagerank, Domain Authority, Domain Age, etc. I think I also sold an entire website with a pretty popular WordPress theme. The primary theme that started it all was acquired by Automattic, the WordPress company.<p>I have been blogging on my personal blog since 2001, so it's been about 24 years now. I think mine started as a Flash website, with a `/blog` serving up the first few articles from PHP (or was it ASP?). The host was in a suburb of Bombay, and I remember seeing my neighboring websites, which were pretty popular brands. Yes, I could see the files, but I could not edit them. Very secure stuff. ;-)<p>Here is a bit of the story I wrote on my website's 20th year <a href="https://brajeshwar.com/2021/brajeshwar.com-2021/" rel="nofollow">https://brajeshwar.com/2021/brajeshwar.com-2021/</a>
26 in a month. Like everyone else here, I went through handcoded HTML (hosted on my Amiga!) to a self-written Perl CMS-like-thing to some PHP ball of mud, and then across a variety of wikis and blog engines and static sites and back to blog setups and back to static sites.<p>Last month I migrated my Hugo setup to a hosted micro.blog account. It adds the missing bits I was too lazy or time-crunched to configure myself, like crossposting to other services, webmentions, and all the other indieweb goodness.<p>A big shout out to Matomo analytics that lets me look at anonymized visitor records on my self-hosted server. It lacks the detail of Google Analytics (although you can pay Matomo for plugins that bring it close) but my visitors' information never leaves my possession. I don't care about what _a_ visitor does on my site, but I enjoy seeing the aggregate patterns, how people came to find me, and things like that.
I'm at 20 years blogging as well. I've managed to keep my archive of posts with the blog as it moved technologies (with an unfortunately ever growing number of dead links as external sites die off).<p>These days Github pages, Jekyll, and writing in Markdown have proven a good way to get things done. Means I don't have to worry about server hosting and all the content is accessible if I ever want to move it.<p>My blog's been very useful to me as a reference for things I've looked at in the past and has hopefully helped out some other people as well. These days I generally blog when it's taken me a little while and some digging to figure something out, hopefully saves other people a bit of time.
25 years last month.<p>Hand-spun HTML on day one; cobbled-together scripts for the next many years; Jekyll once it hit 1.0; today, Astro.<p>It feels like a real "moment" where people are reconsidering blogging and personal domain names; I'm excited to see what comes of it.
Congratulations on the achievement. I recently hit my 10 year blogging milestone.[1]<p>I've also written about some similar thoughts to those in your linked "Content is King" post.[2] Long may the individualist personal website live.<p>[1]: <a href="https://davidyat.es/2024/04/07/ten-years/" rel="nofollow">https://davidyat.es/2024/04/07/ten-years/</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://davidyat.es/2020/03/14/reader-modes/" rel="nofollow">https://davidyat.es/2020/03/14/reader-modes/</a>
Thanks for posting. It's fascinating you've kept up with it so long. Same with a couple other commenters in this post. I've had a website is some form for the same amount of time, but while I tinkered with blogs a few times it never made to my main site. Here's mine with it's unchanged design from like ~2005 (I'm not sure when) with just some simple additions of content over time. <a href="http://www.benjaminosborne.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.benjaminosborne.com</a>
I suggest to use a wiki instead of a blog. The idea here is that a blog might contain articles that are more "polished" and those that you want to share with others while a wiki is a place to store personal knowledge which is a constant work in progress. This way a 'blog' is simply a subset of wiki wherein you have a page called 'blog' that just links to various articles in the wiki.<p>For example: <a href="https://kamaraju.xyz/dk/" rel="nofollow">https://kamaraju.xyz/dk/</a> is my wiki, <a href="https://www.kamaraju.xyz/dk/blog" rel="nofollow">https://www.kamaraju.xyz/dk/blog</a> is my blog.
23 years so far, using my own blogging engine [1]. It's nice to see others have been doing this for over 20 years.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/spc476/mod_blog">https://github.com/spc476/mod_blog</a>
Blogging since last year on my own site. Didn’t want any obstructions and something that loaded really fast, just hacked something together with PHP and static files.<p>PHP is a great template language.<p>So far I think it already led to some interesting opportunities and good discussions. All of my articles got picked up by well-know newsletters so at least it’s good enough for other people.<p>You only get a discussion if you claim something outrageous, you’re completely wrong or you share something that can be read in less than a minute.
Tried to blog before, but never got into it until last year.<p><a href="https://blog.sapico.me/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.sapico.me/</a><p>Ofc I blogged about the setup ;) <a href="https://blog.sapico.me/posts/setting-up-a-blog-on-cloudflare-pages/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.sapico.me/posts/setting-up-a-blog-on-cloudflare...</a><p>It's Hugo on Cloudflare pages fyi. Auto deployed after committing.
Ha, very nice. My blog is 19 years old, although the website itself I started 25 years ago! It has been hard to keep up and keep posting in the most recent years. With kids life got real busy! You have inspired me to go back and keep posting as well.<p><a href="https://www.balcells.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.balcells.com/</a>
I started blogging about stuff I've learned about that I am likely to forget down the road. It feels so good when you throw up a post, never share it, and still manage to get a thank you email for writing it years later. If you have a folder full of notes, I would recommend turning them into a blog on a rainy day.
I passed 20 years in December and wrote this about it: <a href="https://loufranco.com/blog/it-was-20-years-ago-today" rel="nofollow">https://loufranco.com/blog/it-was-20-years-ago-today</a><p>I don't have a lot of readers, but the blog opened some doors for me (and continues to).
The bit about PHP made me yearn for those simple days. Now creating a website with all the trendy technologies creates such a barrier to creation and creativity. It seems large scale system good practice has trodden the small, quick and creative.
Very nice article and happy belated anniversary.<p>I have my own personal WEB Site, but I have been moving it to Gemini since I find maintenance of it is far easier with Gemini that html.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)</a><p>And good luck with the next 20 :)