I annoy myself. I want to post content to my own personal site and not through closed social networks — because I want to keep control of everything I create forever. But the networks are so easy to use and work everywhere and more people read them than read this site.
Over the years I’ve said that I will post everything through my site. In 1999, 2003, 2008 and 2013 (and other years), for a little while each time, I did.
However, over the last few months I’ve been working on Barley 2.0. This release will bring a lot more capability to the content management system I use for this site and as a result the desire to bring everything together once more is rising.
I’ve been incredibly inspired by Jeremy Keith and Manton Reece. Both of them are doing a remarkable job sharing everything through their own web sites and then onto social networks and they are figuring it all out as they go.
So, starting tonight that is what I’m going to try again to do with a goal of sticking with it in perpetuity. This doesn’t mean that I won’t be posting to Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, but that everything that I post there will originate here on my site. I may still craft those messages manually (since each network is so nuanced) but like Jeremy and Manton I will have to figure that out as I go too.
I hope this will have a few positive side effects. First, I’ll have control of my own content’s destiny. Second, I’ll have greater control of my content’s presentation. Third, this will force Barley to get very good at posting from mobile devices and at sharing with social networks — two features Barley should have anyway.
Expect my site to change dramatically over coming weeks as I figure all of this out.