Kicking off the new year with a new site and a renewed profile
The first week after the new year is always an odd one. Only a little going on, but a lot of preparation and thinking about what to do this year. That’s not quite how it turned out for me.
Following the debacle at Substack, I needed to migrate my newsletter (link) to a new platform. I spent far too much time researching options and tried out WordPress. To cut a long story short, that was a mistake as it quickly dawned on me that their idea of a newsletter differed slightly from mine. I didn’t choose it mindlessly, and I’d even exchanged it with support to try to understand the system. But despite this, it didn’t work out for me. I found that I fought more with the interface during the design than I was prepared to do. It’s not for me.
It is a great platform and one that I recommend to others, but not for newsletters. I’ve lost a little money on buying a subscription, although I will see if I can claw some of that back. But mostly, I lost a lot of time as I had to re-migrate everything to the new platform a second time. This was not an easy task.
So, this led me to find another solution for the newsletter. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many options out there, and the ones that are are pretty expensive, certainly more costly than the freemium model of Substack. If I were charging for the newsletter, I’d have a much bigger dilemma on my hands, but by virtue of the fact that mine is free, it gave me a lot more freedom to choose.
I’ve had a lot of writing I’d been doing in different places and had several websites scattered around the internet, with which I felt it was time to clean that up and consolidate as much as possible. So, I thought I’d use the opportunity to do just that, ultimately settling on micro.blog (where you’re reading this from) as the central platform for hosting a blog and a newsletter, allowing some crossposting to Mastodon, etc.
It took a little while and some reading to understand the product’s philosophy, but once I got the basic idea, it was pretty simple to migrate everything here. There are still bits that are not as I would like yet, but that can wait, and it can be an iterative process. But I’m pretty happy with how it has turned out for now.
I’ll post both this blog and the newsletter here from now on. I’ve decided on a format to help distinguish the type of posts (three). 📅 this emoji (in the title) will show it as a blog post (this type of weekly note and other thoughts), and the 🗞️ depicts the newsletter. These posts will be much longer and will go out to the email list you (can subscribe here). The third type of post will have no emoji and will typically be a short-form Twitter-type post. I don’t do that often, so we’ll see how it goes.
Lastly, I’ve been co-writing a proposal to conduct some research into online safety and digital education in the Caribbean. The proposal is due on the 31st of January, so with a bit of luck that’ll be a nice project over the coming months. I’m also going to try to put together a more detailed project for a European funding programme to try to get the Caribbean Digital Compass off the ground. It’s a project I’m passionate about, and I believe it can make a difference in the region. I’ll update here as and when.
Reading
One of the nice features of micro.blog is the Bookshelves system. I’ve set up a page on my site that lists all the books I’m currently reading, and it does it in a really attractive fashion. You see the title, the author and the cover. If you click on a book, you can see it on several platforms for purchase or library loan.
Hidden from the public view (although this is a setting) is a Want to Read list. I could make it public, but I’ve decided to keep it private for the moment.
When I finish a book, the system can help me make a post about the book I’ve just read. I’ll see if I do that or not in the future. It’s not something I have the habit of doing, but why not document my thoughts, even if it is just for me in the future?
Of note
The ongoing saga on Substack hasn’t resolved itself as yet, and I suspect the owners are playing for time. I expect them to have a fairly difficult 2024, and I wonder about the platform’s long-term viability, given that many writers with a conscience will not stay there.
As I said, there are a few good alternatives, and I’ve taken the micro.blog route to accomplish several things at the same time. It is not just a migration of the newsletter but also a consolidation of all the writing I do and a development of my profile to be a little clearer than it was. I hope I have done that.
Have a great week.
