#how to start a WordPress blog

[webtechnicaltips]

Learn How to start a food blog with WordPress in 2023 and make money with your blog. In this video, I'll show you the step-by-step process of creating a food blog using WP Delicious plugin and also share earning method, how you can start earning with your food blog.

[wjmdigitaldesign]

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org: What’s the Difference and Which One Should You Choose?

If you’re thinking about launching a website or starting a blog, chances are you’ve come across WordPress. But there’s a common point of confusion: WordPress.com vs WordPress.org. At first glance, they sound like the same thing — but they’re actually quite different platforms with distinct features, pros, and cons.

In this blog post, we’ll break down the differences between the two, help you understand which one suits your needs, and guide you toward the best choice for your website goals.

What is WordPress.org?

WordPress.org is the self-hosted version of WordPress. It’s the open-source software that anyone can download for free and install on their own web hosting server. With WordPress.org, you have full control over your website.

Key Features:

Complete Customization: Install any theme or plugin, modify the code, and design your site exactly the way you want.

Ownership: You fully own your website and all its content.

Monetization Freedom: Use any ad network, sell products, offer memberships, or add affiliate links with no restrictions.

Advanced Functionality: Great for eCommerce (using plugins like WooCommerce), custom development, SEO tools, and more.

Pros:

Total control and flexibility

Thousands of free and premium plugins/themes

Full access to your site's backend and data

Ideal for business, large blogs, and complex websites

Cons:

Requires web hosting (usually $5–$15/month)

You handle security, backups, and updates (though plugins can automate much of this)

Slightly steeper learning curve for beginners

What is WordPress.com?

WordPress.com is a hosted platform created by Automattic (the company behind WordPress). It offers a simplified, all-in-one solution for building a website without worrying about hosting, maintenance, or technical tasks.

Key Features:

No Hosting Needed: Hosting is included. No need to buy a separate plan or domain (though custom domains are available on paid plans).

Easy to Start: Perfect for beginners who want a fast and simple setup.

Maintenance-Free: WordPress.com handles updates, security, and backups.

Pros:

Free basic plan available

No setup or maintenance required

User-friendly dashboard

Great for hobby blogs, personal websites, or simple portfolios

Cons:

Limited customization (especially on the free plan)

Cannot upload custom themes or plugins unless on Business or higher plan

Limited monetization options on lower-tier plans

WordPress.com branding unless you upgrade

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org: Quick Comparison Table

Feature

WordPress.com

WordPress.org

Hosting

Included

You provide (self-hosted)

Cost

Free with paid upgrades

Free software, hosting cost

Custom Themes & Plugins

Limited (paid plans only)

Unlimited

Monetization Freedom

Limited

Full control

eCommerce

Only on paid plans

Full eCommerce support

Maintenance

Handled for you

You manage it

Suitable For

Beginners, personal blogs

Businesses, pros, devs

Which One Should You Choose?

Choose WordPress.com if:

You want a hassle-free experience and don’t want to manage hosting or security.

You’re a beginner with no technical background.

You just need a simple blog or portfolio site.

You’re okay with limited flexibility or willing to pay for premium features.

Choose WordPress.org if:

You want full control and the ability to customize everything.

You’re building a business website, store, or scalable project.

You need to monetize your content freely.

You're comfortable (or willing to learn) about managing your own hosting.

Final Thoughts

Both WordPress.com and WordPress.org offer powerful tools for creating websites, but the right choice depends on your goals. If you’re starting out or want something easy and low-maintenance, WordPress.com is a solid option. If you're aiming for maximum control, customization, and scalability, WordPress.org is the way to go.

Still unsure? Start with WordPress.com to get your feet wet — and when you’re ready for more freedom, you can always migrate to WordPress.org.

Need help deciding or building your site? Contact WJM Digital Design for professional guidance, custom WordPress development, and support tailored to your goals. info@wjmdigitaldesign.com

[sideurl]

How to Start a Blog in 2025: Step-by-Step Guide

Hey there! So you want to start a blog in 2025? Awesome—blogging is still one of the best ways to share your passion, build an audience, and even make some money. I’ve walked a bunch of people through this, so here’s the exact roadmap I’d share over coffee: 1. Figure Out Your Focus First up, think about what lights you up. Travel hacks? Plant-based recipes? AI tools? Jot down 5–10 topics you…

[derspawn]

How to Start a Blog in 2025: Step-by-Step Guide

Hey there! So you want to start a blog in 2025? Awesome—blogging is still one of the best ways to share your passion, build an audience, and even make some money. I’ve walked a bunch of people through this, so here’s the exact roadmap I’d share over coffee: 1. Figure Out Your Focus First up, think about what lights you up. Travel hacks? Plant-based recipes? AI tools? Jot down 5–10 topics you…

[mtech4you]

Free Secure Web Hosting for Students or Individuals for Learning Purposes

दोस्त आज मैं आपको बहोत ही खास जानकारी देना चाहता हूँ जो शायद अभी तक आपको इसके बारे में पता नहीं होगा और इसीलिए आप इस आर्टिकल में आये है, अगर आपके पास होस्टिंग और डोमेन खरीदने के पैसे नहीं हैं, तो घबराने की जरूरत नहीं है। आज के इस आर्टिकल में मैं आपको बताऊंगा कि कैसे आप Free Resources का इस्तेमाल करके ब्लॉगिंग, वेबसाइट डिजाइनिंग, और वेब डेवेलपमेंट जैसी Skills को बिना पैसे खर्च किए सीख सकते…

[familytubem]

Beat the Summer Heat with Spicy & Sour Seafood! 🦐🌶️ Refreshing & Easy Recipe! #美食教程 #viralvideo

[luckycaricature]

I just stopped liking posts altogether tbh

this is assuming its on art you normally wouldn't jump to reblog. i myself only rb stuff i really really like so .

The 'rude/demanding' tone would be stuff along the lines of "if you like but don't reblog I'll [threat]" which i see surprisingly often, both serious and more silly

[ktempestbradford]

I have been on a Willy Wonkified journey today and I need y'all to come with me

It started so innocently. Scrolling Google News I come across this article on Ars Technica:

At first glance I thought what happened was parents saw AI-generated images of an event their kids were at and became concerned, then realized it was fake. The reality? Oh so much better.

On Saturday, event organizers shut down a Glasgow-based "Willy's Chocolate Experience" after customers complained that the unofficial Wonka-inspired event, which took place in a sparsely decorated venue, did not match the lush AI-generated images listed on its official website.... According to Sky News, police were called to the event, and "advice was given."

Thing is, the people who paid to go were obviously not expecting exactly this:

But I can see how they'd be a bit pissed upon arriving to this:

It gets worse.

"Tempest, how could it possibly--"

source of this video that also includes this charming description:

Made up a villain called The Unknown — 'an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls'

There is already a meme.

Oh yes, the Wish.com Oompa Loompa:

Who has already done an interview!

As bad (and hilarious) as this all is, I got curious about the company that put on this event. Did they somehow overreach? Did the actors they hired back out at the last minute? (Or after they saw the script...) Oddly enough, it doesn't seem so!

Given what I found when poking around I'm legit surprised there was an event at all. Cuz this outfit seems to be 100% a scam.

The website for this specific event is here and it has many AI generated images on it, as stated. I don't think anyone who bought tickets looked very closely at these images, otherwise they might have been concerned about how much Catgacating their children would be exposed to.

Yes, Catgacating. You know, CATgacating!

I personally don't think anyone should serve exarserdray flavored lollipops in public spaces given how many people are allergic to it. And the sweet teats might not have been age appropriate.

Though the Twilight Tunnel looks pretty cool:

I'm not sure that Dim Tight Twdrding is safe. I've also been warned that Vivue Sounds are in that weird frequency range that makes you poop your pants upon hearing them.

Yes, Virginia, these folks used an AI image generator for everything on the website and used Chat GPT for some of the text! From the FAQ:

Q: I cannot go on the available days. Will you have more dates in the future? A: Should there be capacity when you arrive, then you will be able to enter without any problems. In the event that this is not the case, we may ask you to wait a bit.

Fear not, for this question is asked again a few lines down and the answer makes more sense.

Curious about the events company behind this disaster, I took myself over to the homepage of House of Illuminati and I was not disappointed.

I would 100% trust these people to plan my wedding.

This abomination of a website is a badly edited WordPress blog filled with AI art and just enough blog posts to make the casual viewer think that it's a legit business for about 0.0004 seconds.

Their attention to detail is stunning, from how they left up the default first post every WP blog gets to how they didn't bother changing the name on several images, thus revealing where they came from. Like this one:

With the lovely and compact filename "DALL·E-2024-01-30-09.50.54-Imagine-a-scene-where-fantasy-and-reality-merge-seamlessly.-In-the-foreground-a-grand-interactive-gala-is-taking-place-filled-with-elegant-guests-i.png"

"Concept.png" came from the same AI generator that gets text almost, but not quiiiiiite right:

There are a suspicious number of .webp images in the uploads, which makes me think they either stole them from other sites where AI "art" was uploaded or they didn't want to pay for the hi-res versions of some and just grabbed the preview image.

The real fun came when I noticed this filename: Before-and-After-Eventologists-Transformation-Edgbaston-Cricket-Ground-1024x1024-1.jpg and decided to do a Google image search. Friends, you will be shocked to hear that the image in question, found on this post touting how they can transform a boring warehouse into a fun event space, was stolen from this actual event planner.

Even better, this weirdly grainy image?

From a post that claims to be about the preparations for a "Willy Wonka" experience (we'll get to this in a minute), is not only NOT an actual image of anyone preparing anything for Illuminati's event, it is stolen from a YouTube thumbnail that's been chopped to remove the name of the company that actually made this. Here's the video.

If you actually read the blog posts they're all copypasta or some AI generated crap. To the point where this seems like not a real business at all. There's very specific business information at the bottom, but nothing else seems real.

As I said, I'm kinda surprised they put on an event at all. This has, "And then they ran off with all our money!" written all over it. I'm perplexed.

And also wondering when the copyright lawyers are gonna start calling, because...

This post explicitly says they're putting together a "Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory Experience" complete with golden tickets.

Somewhere along the line someone must have wised up, because the actual event was called "Willys Chocolate Experience" (note the lack of apostrophe) and the script they handed to the actors about 10 minutes before they were supposed to "perform" was about a "Willy McDuff" and his chocolate factory.

As I was going through this madness with friends in a chat, one pointed out that it took very little prompting to get the free Chat GPT to spit out an event description and such very similar to all this while avoiding copyrighted phrases. But he couldn't figure out where the McDuff came from since it wasn't the type of thing GPT would usually spit out...

Until he altered the prompt to include it would be happening in Glasgow, Scotland.

You cannot make this stuff up.

But truly, honestly, I do not even understand why they didn't take the money and run. Clearly this was all set up to be a scam. A lazy, AI generated scam.

Everything from the website to the event images to the copy to the "script" to the names of things was either stolen or AI generated (aka stolen). Hell, I'd be looking for some poor Japanese visitor wandering the streets of Glasgow, confused, after being jacked for his mascot costume.

HE LIVES IN THE WALLS, Y'ALL.

[tmblrplsdonutbanme]

Breaking News: @radfemcroatia completes her very first cognizant statement, "I am not a feminist".

"I get irrationally angry when i see women supporting women"

"Women are equally responsible for being raped and oppressed for thousands of years"

"Normie women"

This doesn't sound like a radical feminist, this sounds like an Andrew Tate supporter. tell me what your blog has done to support women?

In the entire time your blog has existed, you never supported a woman once. you never outright CRITICSED a MAN. You only used men as a comparison for why you hate other women.

you have dedicated your time here to sending death threats to women you deem "less feminist". Multiple at that.

You are an unstable, woman-hating incel and you have no place here.

and the most disgusting repost in all of radblr.

You're blaming women for their rape? do you not understand that?

nvm.. it appears you do

It shouldn't have to be said.: You are not a radical feminist if you think that the patriarchy is the fault of the oppressed.

You take every step backwards to defend men. If a woman was raped, it's "what was she wearing", "she let him in" "why was she with him"

and if all else fails, its "well a women out there somewhere birthed the rapist"

not only that, but you're a bioessentialist too

You say women are cock slaves and then say this?

And on top of that, this sentence is funny because YOU DO say it was imposed on us by aliens, by posting not just once, but 3 times, a WordPress article that says women are biologically inferior and neutralized by method of probing. You inact purity culture to an extent that you say sex causes "intellectual disabilities" in women, which you agree, apparently, is highly saturated. Not only do you blame women for getting raped, you blame them for getting pregnant?

50 million women are sex trafficked, and that doesn't account for the 50% of all women that live in a location where they legally cannot access the same freedom of a man without his permission. almost 25% of women live in areas where the age of consent is prepubescent. in areas where woman cannot own guns, cannot travel, cannot LEAVE without being harassed, nonetheless killed. the next time you talk about how it's "womans fault" for "letting men in" or for "getting raped by someone's son" or for "not starting a revolution because they're too lazy" i want you to think of this image

think of the fact that the GOVERNMENT did this to a 6 year old for saying "no", and think about how that shaped her for the rest of her life.

I wouldn't be surprised if you don't, because you CANT think, judging by who you follow

What does it take u to understand that being separatist does not equate to blaming women for their systemic rape? I can tell youre rich white and privileged and most of all STUPID for even considering the thought that women are responsible for the patriarchy.

did you not know that women get raped so they can be decapitated? 11000 deaths like these a month

Have you tried speak to a Muslim women before? a woman who believes she will go to hell if she disobeys, a women who legally can get raped and beat by her husband, who can legally, own sex slaves?

Where is your female revolution? all you have done is cut support for them. You're a net negative in this community and if i didnt know any better, id say you're a neonazi tate fan.

@radfemcroatia ALLEGEDLY sending death threats for lukewarm male interactions

[17020]

Hiiiii can I cash in a like and sub to ur blog for some hoshina headcannons?

If at all possible could it be hoshina x narumis twin!sister / sibling reader? Ilysm!!!!!!!!!

I really relate to the whole scholarship thing BTW. I'm currently debating the pros and cons of collage due to lack of funds :') I hope you have good luck in ir studies tho!!!!

- anony 🥶🥵

Ps. Iykyk with the *icy---hot* emojis hehe

hiihiii !! thank you so much for supporting my wordpress event! i went with fem sibling! reader <3

SOSHIRO HOSHINA . . . IS A TRAITOR? NO! YOU ARE!

— picture this: two narumi siblings in the first division, co-captains, and basically whipping up a storm in the ariake maritime base. even though you love your brother, you know he can be quite a handful, so you try to piss him off whichever way you can. and when you find out he absolutely despises hoshina, it's like a lightbulb lit up in your brain.

— so what do you do? you do everything in your power to enrage gen. it starts off subtle, like asking shinonome "who's that guy with the cute bowl cut?" in front of him, and to your surprise said bowl cut guy turns around and immediately knows who you are. so he plays along. you exchange numbers and get to talking. and gen will throw a tantrum if the two of you are alone.

— pissing gen off will include: making googly eyes at hoshina in front of narumi, asking him out to lunch, training with him and asking for some personal lessons, touching his bicep and going "soshiro you're so strong!!" and your brother questioning "since when are you so close with the beady-eyed dumbass????" and you best believe when hoshina FINALLy asks you on a date, he's taking proper care of you and making you feel very much loved.

— eventually, hoshina does ask about your situation(ship). because he knows damn well you're using him, he just wants to hear it from you. worst part is, you genuinely grew to like him. so he asks "so how long are ya gonna pretend ya like me?" and you're like "pretend??" and he explains how he was genuinely interested in you and took the opportunity to get to know you. you admit you like him too, even though it wasn't all genuine at first. anyway at the wedding gen can be seen stomping every flower he comes across and scoffs when people cheer for the happy couple.

[tinystepsforward]

automattic vs wp engine mastterpost

adrienne's GitHub recap is probably the best place to see a comprehensive timeline of what's going down. it's been kept up to date. my (very out of date) previous writeup is here.

what's happened/other links

Matt has not logged off, just switched platforms, so there's lots on X/Twitter, Reddit, and Hacker News. it's really not worth wading through.

WP Engine actually filed suit.

the complaint includes some truly remarkable screenshots of Matt trying to blackmail the CEO of WP Engine.

which... personally i would not happily work for someone who just blackmailed me while not even my boss, but that's just me. he hasn't denied this at all, in fact confirming on Hacker News:

I haven't doxxed any private texts from other parties like they have. [source]

and, notably,

I even invited her to my 40th birthday on Jan 11, another text message she decided not to share. [source]

this gives me the creeps. in the context of the rest of the way he's talking to her, and the ways in which he's interacted with women in general, it's. not great.

also he slid into an ex-employee (also a woman)'s DMs asking why she was being mean to him bc he'd never been nothing but nice to her, while also making legal threats. so y'know, pattern of behaviour.

a good writeup of the social side of things

if you don't care so much about the open-source stuff, Steph Lundberg's writeup is, like her previous one on Matt's Tumblr meltdown, pretty solid and people-focused.

Mullenweg has already demonstrated egregious lapses in judgment and abuses of power, it’s just that up until now he’s wielded his power against vulnerable populations without access to high-powered lawyers and their own massive platforms.

a more technical writeup

this one is melodramatic in the same ways Matt was (uses war terminology), which i don't agree with, and which led to some... internal arguments at Automattic. that part's not my story to tell, but a little more on that later. it's a solid writeup of the actual WordPress side of things. there's some seriously dodgy trademark behaviour going on here.

of note: this blogger locked comments on his post:

and then Matt, uh, found a way around that:

wild!

10% of Automattic leaves

that's a link to Matt's blog post. here's an Internet Archive link.

in short, staff were offered a severance deal of the higher of $30k or six months' salary. while that's very generous, it's still very risky in today's tech market, especially (for the same reasons i mentioned when Matt was melting down on here) for people outside the US, people who need the health insurance, or people with young kids. despite that, 10% decided with very little notice (they had two days to decide) to leave.

However now, I feel much lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. As the kids say, LFG!

i'm thrilled to see some of my ex-colleagues make it out. i'm keeping the rest who have stayed on in my thoughts. i don't know anyone who's wholesale shilling for Matt.

Matt's been pressuring staff to post in support of him, @-ing the entire company to vote on Twitter polls in his favor, and so on. many of the people who stayed have written blog posts about it, all starting with "I stayed". people on social media have pointed out the very clear pattern of Automatticians jumping into discourse to defend Matt, and it doesn't look good.

i don't have a lot to say about those posts, except to highlight Jeffrey Zeldman, whose "I stayed" post is perhaps one of the more honest ones. (his Rodney King reference was in poor taste, and he... i don't like his role at automattic, tbc) but like. he's nearly 70. he helped shape the modern internet and develop its accessibility standards. he has often put his neck on the line for disabled staff who don't have as much clout as he does. given the financial troubles he talks about and the state of this market and how old he is, i personally have read between the lines of what he's saying in a particular way.

fuck, man. i'm sad. i'm sad for all my friends who are creaking under the strain and watching others leave but who can't do that. i'm sad that many of them are left in teams which are half-empty or divisions where significant senior leadership are just gone, with no time to document what they had in progress.

i'm sad for Josepha Haden Chomphosy, the former executive director of the WordPress Foundation, who was dealing with a personal emergency and ended up having to miss WordCamp US (where Matt started publicly starting shit with WPE). she came back from that to a gigantic fire in the community she's invested a decade of careful, Matt-negotiating, stewardship to, and decided to take the severance offer. she deserved better.

other things Matt's been up to

mostly linking to comments or posts which compile things here, bc it's too scattered otherwise.

blocking people from the official WordPress X account if they disapprove of his actions.

publicly talking about a vulnerability in ACF, a plugin WPE maintains, which could put thousands of sites at risk. this is not normal, and he met with so much horror even from current staff that he deleted his post.

saying he comes across badly because he's "a little ASD", which is driving me personally up the fucking wall. he's never once said it before and he really is turning into Temu Elon.

generally bragging that he still has more planned. jesus fucking christ

continually saying that WPE's suit is against WordPress.org and the community, which is not true. on which note, his pinned tweet is certainly something:

his choice of lawyer is uh. the kind of guy to defend nestle against literal child slaves.

as always, while i think WordPress crumbling will disproportionately affect websites in poorer parts of the world, there are certainly tyrants who are causing much more immediate and potent suffering. if you've read this far, please do send anything you have spare to gazafunds.com.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Linkrot

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

Here's an underrated cognitive virtue: "object permanence" – that is, remembering how you perceived something previously. As Riley Quinn often reminds us, the left is the ideology of object permanence – to be a leftist is to hate and mistrust the CIA even when they're tormenting Trump for a brief instant, or to remember that it was once possible for a working person to support their family with their wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/27/six-sells/#youre-holding-it-wrong

The thing is, object permanence is hard. Life comes at you quickly. It's very hard to remember facts, and the order in which those facts arrived – it's even harder to remember how you felt about those facts in the moment.

This is where blogging comes in – for me, at least. Back in 1997, Scott Edelman – editor of Science Fiction Age – asked me to take over the back page of the magazine by writing up ten links of interest for the nascent web. I wrote that column until the spring of 2000, then, in early 2001, Mark Frauenfelder asked me to guest-edit Boing Boing, whereupon the tempo of my web-logging went daily. I kept that up on Boing Boing for more than 19 years, writing about 54,000 posts. In February, 2020, I started Pluralistic.net, my solo project, a kind of blog/newsletter, and in the four-plus years since, I've written about 1,200 editions containing between one and twelve posts each.

This gigantic corpus of everything I ever considered to be noteworthy is immensely valuable to me. The act of taking notes in public is a powerful discipline: rather than jotting cryptic notes to myself in a commonplace book, I publish those notes for strangers. This imposes a rigor on the note-taking that makes those notes far more useful to me in years to come.

Better still: public note-taking is powerfully mnemonic. The things I've taken notes on form a kind of supersaturated solution of story ideas, essay ideas, speech ideas, and more, and periodically two or more of these fragments will glom together, nucleate, and a fully-formed work will crystallize out of the solution.

Then, the fact that all these fragments are also database entries – contained in the back-end of a WordPress installation that I can run complex queries on – comes into play, letting me swiftly and reliably confirm my memories of these long-gone phenomena. Inevitably, these queries turn up material that I've totally forgotten, and these make the result even richer, like adding homemade stock to a stew to bring out a rich and complicated flavor. Better still, many of these posts have been annotated by readers with supplemental materials or vigorous objections.

I call this all "The Memex Method" and it lets me write a lot (I wrote nine books during lockdown, as I used work to distract me from anxiety – something I stumbled into through a lifetime of chronic pain management):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Back in 2013, I started a new daily Boing Boing feature: "This Day In Blogging History," wherein I would look at the archive of posts for that day one, five and ten years previously:

https://boingboing.net/2013/06/24/this-day-in-blogging-history.html

With Pluralistic, I turned this into a daily newsletter feature, now stretching back to twenty, fifteen, ten, five and one year ago. Here's today's:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/21/noway-back-machine/#retro

This is a tremendous adjunct to the Memex Method. It's a structured way to review everything I've ever thought about, in five-year increments, every single day. I liken this to working dough, where there's stuff at the edges getting dried out and crumbly, and so your fold it all back into the middle. All these old fragments naturally slip out of your thoughts and understanding, but you can revive their centrality by briefly paying attention to them for a few minutes every day.

This structured daily review is a wonderful way to maintain object permanence, reviewing your attitudes and beliefs over time. It's also a way to understand the long-forgotten origins of issues that are central to you today. Yesterday, I was reminded that I started thinking about automotive Right to Repair 15 years ago:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/right-repair-law-pro

Given that we're still fighting over this, that's some important perspective, a reminder of the likely timescales involved in more recent issues where I feel like little progress is being made.

Remember when we all got pissed off because the mustache-twirling evil CEO of Warners, David Zaslav, was shredding highly anticipated TV shows and movies prior to their release to get a tax-credit? Turns out that we started getting angry about this stuff twenty years ago, when Michael Eisner did it to Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911":

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/us/disney-is-blocking-distribution-of-film-that-criticizes-bush.html

It's not just object permanence: this daily spelunk through my old records is also a way to continuously and methodically sound the web for linkrot: when old links go bad. Over the past five years, I've noticed a very sharp increase in linkrot, and even worse, in the odious practice of spammers taking over my dead friends' former blogs and turning them into AI spam-farms:

https://www.wired.com/story/confessions-of-an-ai-clickbait-kingpin/

The good people at the Pew Research Center have just released a careful, quantitative study of linkrot that confirms – and exceeds – my worst suspicions about the decay of the web:

https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/

The headline finding from "When Online Content Disappears" is that 38% of the web of 2013 is gone today. Wikipedia references are especially hard-hit, with 23% of news links missing and 21% of government websites gone. The majority of Wikipedia entries have at least one broken link in their reference sections. Twitter is another industrial-scale oubliette: a fifth of English tweets disappear within a matter of months; for Turkish and Arabic tweets, it's 40%.

Thankfully, someone has plugged the web's memory-hole. Since 2001, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has allowed web users to see captures of web-pages, tracking their changes over time. I was at the Wayback Machine's launch party, and right away, I could see its value. Today, I make extensive use of Wayback Machine captures for my "This Day In History" posts, and when I find dead links on the web.

The Wayback Machine went public in 2001, but Archive founder Brewster Kahle started scraping the web in 1996. Today's post graphic – a modified Yahoo homepage from October 17, 1996 – is the oldest Yahoo capture on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/19960501000000*/yahoo.com

Remember that the next time someone tells you that we must stamp out web-scraping for one reason or another. There are plenty of ugly ways to use scraping (looking at you, Clearview AI) that we should ban, but scraping itself is very good:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

And so is the Internet Archive, which makes the legal threats it faces today all the more frightening. Lawsuits brought by the Big Five publishers and Big Three labels will, if successful, snuff out the Internet Archive altogether, and with it, the Wayback Machine – the only record we have of our ephemeral internet:

https://blog.archive.org/2024/04/19/internet-archive-stands-firm-on-library-digital-rights-in-final-brief-of-hachette-v-internet-archive-lawsuit/

Libraries burn. The Internet Archive may seem like a sturdy and eternal repository for our collective object permanence about the internet, but it is very fragile, and could disappear like that.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/21/noway-back-machine/#pew-pew-pew

[wittywords]

hi so a lil update. for those of you who don't know my whole thing is reading the oxford dictionary. like I'm not just picking random words on the internet, I actually plan to finish OED. I started last spring and I'm almost done with letter H (still haven't made the posts but I have the words saved in a document). it's going a bit slower that I wanted because I'm still in school but I want to finish it by the end of the year

there's also the problem with me not having an OED subscription which means that I can't see longer definitions. like the website only let's you see the beginning which sucks because I have a document full of definitions I need to complete. my plan is to wait until summer when I'll have more free time to pay for a subscription and search all those words. there's no way I'm paying for more than a couple of months I just can't afford that right now. because of it I'll probably start posting words starting with A again which is ruining the whole vibe of the blog but oh well what can you do

also when I'm done like DONE with everything I want to start making lists with words in different categories (like words that appeared in the 90s, love-related words, words starting with letter whatever, you get the idea). and maybe post some writing tips and resources as well in the meantime

I'm debating whether I should make a Patreon or make a blog with WordPress and earn money through ads. like on one hand I don't really like ads but on the other I know what it's like to be a young writer and rely on free resources posted by other writers and I don't want to put my stuff on Patreon and demand payment for other people to be able to read it, but I have over 3,5k followers and I had a link to my ko-fi for months in my bio and I haven't seen one dollar so relying on donations is out of the question

I spent over a hundred hours on this project and who knows how much longer it's gonna take me to finish it and I feel like I deserve to earn something after all this work. and also I need money. so yeah. tell me in the comments what you think

edit: I think I'm gonna go with the second idea and make a blog with WordPress or some other platform

[jellogram]

Ok I am getting asked several times a day about this so I am going to break this down into steps and then pin this post.

How I Got a Job as a Travel Writer (aka the ten steps I took that eventually got me hired in the writing world)

I started writing unpaid for a magazine when I was in high school. I got a leg up because I knew someone whose parent knew the editor of an indie mag and gave me an email address. Unless you are lucky enough to find a connection like that, I suggest reaching out to indie mags and local publications to see if anyone will let you write for them for free.

Got a college degree (cultural anthropology)

Did an unpaid marketing internship one summer in college (it was at night so I could work during the day)

Did all the copywriting and marketing for a club on campus

Graduated in spring 2020, worked a bunch of dead-end jobs

Eventually ended up unemployed and directionless, lived off the government and savings and was generally lost and unhappy.

Decided I wanted a copywriting job but couldn't get hired. Spent months and months applying, never even got an interview.

Saw that several related jobs requested experience in stuff like SEO, html, Google Analytics, and WordPress. Took free online classes to learn those things. Also picked up some copywriting gigs from Upwork on the side to make some money and beef up my portfolio.

To practice WordPress and make myself seem more professional, I started a blog that functioned as a literary journal and published submissions from other young writers.

Found an opening at a copywriting agency and wrote some SEO articles on contract. This didn't pay enough to live on, but it was fun and made my resume way more impressive.

Eventually the agency work dried up and they didn't have any assignments for me, so I went back to Indeed with my new beefed up resume. I saw a job for travel writing and applied. I got hired.