Previous Note - 62320211124 - Introducing the Elderthing
Why didn't I just make a blog? What are the comparative advantages and disadvantages of a blog versus a static site for this kind of project?
So, a blog has it's downsides. I miss out on absolute control of the html with lots of blogging software. Or if html is all I desire, there may be extra features I don't need lumped in. Most of my prior experience has been on blogger, where I could do many of the things I'm doing here, though through a more painful to navigate interface. The update to the interface a few years ago on Blogger, that hid features behind extra button presses really killed it for me. Not that it ruined the program much, but the idea that if the Company wanted, they could mess with my backend. Here, using my own hand-crafted html, I'm the sole arbitrator of that kind of thing, though neocities may change the process of uploading or something, I guess.
This sort of fine control is even more important when creating piles of links that all are supposed to connect, as the Elderthing is meant to. It may be an irrational worry, but I don't want architecture changes making my links go kablooie. But there are some downsides: My attempts to search my own site via google have shown that google cannot find my site. I think this has to do with how neocities as a whole interacts. Maybe I need my own domain name. Maybe my website hasn't been alive long enough to be indexed into google's search wizardry. Regardless, the Elderthing, and my site as a whole, are not innately searchable. If I want anything out of it, I have to dig through it by using only the structure and framework which I've built into it. In terms of chaining my thoughts together, this should have interesting effects, but I don't know whether it'll be to my benefit or not yet. Once the Elderthing has a few hundred entries, it may be time to make a judgement on that.
There are some other minor things missing. No mailing list, or subscribe button. Cest la vie. My plan is to use the landing page of DeepAcolyte as where the updates go. So additional posts to the Elderthing will be mentioned there chronologically. This of course requires that people check back on the main page regularly. Maybe I can post annoucements to facebook or something. But that's later. I want there to be a body of content to be explored before I worry about whether anyone but myself is using it. Plus the benefits for me personally remain, regardless of whether this is of use to anyone else.
I'm also unsure how I should cap the maximum length of an individual note. So far, I'm just trying to keep all the text so it fit's in one 'screen worth' of my word processor. My theory is that larger notes are easier to digest, but smaller notes will form more connections over time? Unsure how that will play out. For reference, this note clocks in at about 550 words, counting the HTML pieces.
Next Note - 62320211342 - Medocrity is The Way