I read a blog post recently, you can find it here.| [Archive.org link in case of linkrot]
The post is mostly someone waxing nostalgic about a time before blogs existed. I joined her on that journey through memory lane - I was making websites back then too and it really was different.
Websites were a labour of love and every single page was made manually - right down to copying and pasting the navigation if you had one (until you discovered the magic of frames that is) and everything you wrote was "everfresh". You didn't talk about your day, you made useful "pages" about a topic. This could be pages with instructions on how to do something or they hosted links to other pages that you helpfully pointed people to.
It was a blissful time of "Under Construction" signs everywhere and not a social media icon to be seen.
My point is that this is not a blog
It may have many of the hallmarks of a blog but there are some big differences that I think are significant enough that I can simply not call what I do blogging.
There are no dates
Look everywhere you want on this story. You wont find a posted date or anything like that. That's because instead of constantly writing new posts I go back and actually update my old ones. If an update happens that makes something I wrote in an article wrong, I'll update the article. This means everything on here should always be up to date.
Dates on blog posts are from a time where the idea was to post often - many people did so daily - and that promoted a quantity over quality issue that I refuse to fall for.
It is not organized chronologically
This kind of builds on the point I just made. This content of my website is organized by category. This is so you can find posts related to your interest and explore others that are similar. Since my posts are updated rather than new ones being written you know it'll always be up to date.
No regular posting schedule
I don't post here daily or weekly or even monthly. This goes on the quality over quantity idea - I update posts pretty regularly but new posts could happen at any point. It's based on me having a great idea and how ever long it takes to actually write/produce the content.
No, we will never go back to the old times
No matter how hard I wish, the Internet is not reverting to what it used to be. I own this part of the web, I have total control over it, so I will make it the kind of website I like to browse. Hopefully others will follow.
I guess what I am trying to say is the default for a personal site doesn't have to be a blog - it can be something totally different - even if you do plan to post often.