Joel Hooks has a post on writing publicly, part of which argues against pagination. Joel writes: “Look, nobody was flipping through pages on your blog to find anything anyway, so it's fine.” Fair enough. (Note that there is some swearing in Joel's post.)

I fully removed pagination from my personal website, which currently affects the “Categories,” “Links,” and “Tags” sections.

I used a Git commit message to describe the differences in page size.

As I included among the “advantages” of a single page per section (and as Joel mentions in the above post), removing pagination also “allows visitors to 'search' (with the 'find' function) for keywords across all titles.” Because it would require integrating a third-party search engine or scripting, however, I don't plan on adding a “proper” search function to my personal website.

The categories and tags sections should help interested visitors, while the site's GitLab repository allows for searching the content of posts.

Day 2: Canonical domain names

I switched to the root domain name as the canonical URL for my personal website.

That being said, the NearlyFreeSpeech.NET response to the question “Are you yes-www or no-www?” summarizes important considerations in choosing a canonical domain.

On the other hand, changing the canonical URL to the root domain fixed the “Error: No HSTS header” message I kept getting from the HSTS Preload List (The full message was “Response error: No HSTS header is present on the response.” even though it is set in the .htaccess file.)

Day 3: Tips for writing more (compiled)

On “less-performative” public writing and writing more, there are other great arguments in the above post by Joel Hooks. For example, Joel criticizes the “idea that everything you post has to be polished to perfection and ready to be consumed.” Joel also points out that, in publishing less “polished” work, we “don't lose the freedom to publish more polished work.”

I'm having fun writing posts as part of #100DaysToOffload! #Day4

You can visit my personal website at ethanyoo.com.

Make writing a part of your identity

The author, Christian, notes that being “good” at writing “isn't the same thing as 'having an easy time doing it' [...] writing is hard, and for the vast majority of us it always will be.” Christian suggests that instead of waiting to “find time to write,” writers should “make a habit of writing,” “stick to a schedule,” and “make appointments with [themselves].” Writing time, it is said, should be measured by “word count,” “goal attainment” (e.g., 500 words every day), and where the most “effort” was spent (i.e., a project name).

Talker's block (Seth Godin)

While I disagree with the idea that “no one ever gets talker's block” and that “talk is ephemeral” — think social anxiety, for example — I do like Seth's reminder that “the second best thing to zero is something better than bad.”

So if you know you have write tomorrow, your brain will start working on something better than bad. And then you’ll inevitably redefine bad and tomorrow will be better than that. And on and on.

#100Days and #100DaysToOffload

I read Seth's post (above) after it was quoted in the announcement for a 100 day writing challenge (@Listed). The challenge:

Write for 100 days? Surely my life is not that interesting. I would run out of things to write about. And that's where the magic lies. Yes, you will run out of things to write about. So what will you write about then?

As part of the #100Days challenge, @Listed also published “Tips for writing every day.” In it, the author expands on the idea of “[running] out of things to write about.”

If you simply transcribe what your mind is thinking, then there's no way you fail this challenge. [...] Your job is to simply sample a small timeline of those thoughts onto paper. You're not doing any work here other than transcribing the thoughts that naturally flow through your mind onto paper.

In “transcribing the thoughts that naturally flow,” #100Days expects us to write without regard for “[winning] a Pulitzer Prize for literature.” Similarly, #100DaysToOffload asks that we “forget about search engine optimization and “all that jargon.”

#100DaysToOffload is “the brainchild of Kev Quirk,” for which Kev asks participants to “tell us about your dog, your cat, your fish tank, or whatever hobbies you have. Someone will find it interesting [emphasis added].”

Kev's guidelines for #100DaysToOffload are more forgiving than those of Christian in “Make writing a part of your identity” or @Listed for #100Days. Instead of maintaining a schedule or writing every day, Kev wants us to:

Publish 100 new posts in the space of a year. You don't need to publish a post every 3 days — if you want a week off, that's fine. If it comes to the end of the year and you have only published 60 posts, that's also fine. Just. Write.

Where should I write?

Pen (or pencil, which I prefer) and paper!

I like the notebooks from Baron Fig.

Where should I write? (Digital)

Consider: The hidden privacy risk in note-taking apps

Note-taking apps have become a welcome replacement for post-it notes. People frequently use them for quick to-do and grocery shopping lists, but they’re also often used to store more private information.

Places to quickly post Markdown and plain-text content without an account, accessible to anyone with the link

Top ten reasons GitHub is a great tool for creative writers

The reasons really apply to version-control software more generally, including Gitea and GitLab. One helpful suggestion by the author:

Not sure whether a particular plotline or character might work? Create a branch!

ghostwriter

“A distraction-free Markdown editor for Windows and Linux,” available under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPLv3).

Joplin

“An open source note taking and to-do application with synchronisation capabilities,” available under the MIT (Expat) License.

Joplin also supports end-to-end encryption (not enabled by default). I use Joplin with a WebDAV (Nextcloud) backend for synchronization.

Mark Text

A “markdown editor that focused on speed and usability,” available under the MIT (Expat) License.

I use Mark Text as an alternative editor to Joplin.

Standard Notes

“A free, open-source, and completely encrypted notes app,” available under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPLv3). Listed (@Listed) is a public blogging platform from Standard Notes.

Note: I specify Expat when referring to the MIT License based on a recommendation from the Free Software Foundation:

Some people call this license “the MIT License,” but that term is misleading, since MIT has used many licenses for software. It is also ambiguous, since the same people also call the X11 license “the MIT License,” failing to distinguish them. We recommend not using the term “MIT License.”

Tangential

Building a digital garden (Tom Critchlow)

Tom describes “a blogging product without a publish button,” which is simply “a less-performative version of blogging — more of a captain's log than a broadcast blog.”

Drawing from the idea of “a captain's log,” note Chris Beckstrom's use of a personal wiki as “a digital garden, a personal knowledgebase, a commonplace book.” In other words, Chris uses it as “an all-purpose notebook.”

Transactional writing: Letters that heal

With all the other ways of communicating digitally, we may have lost touch with the power of letter writing to change our lives, but it is still a powerful tool, even in the form of an email. So ask yourself: Do you owe someone a letter? Or maybe you are waiting for a letter that is never going to come? Maybe you should sit right down and write yourself a letter. Letter writing can be therapeutic for the writer as well as the recipient, and it may be just the thing to help you change perspective.

#100DaysToOffload #Day3

You can visit my personal website at ethanyoo.com.

Heroku provides a list of DNS providers with support for root domains through something other than an A record. On the same page, Heroku warns against using only an A record (at least where dynamic IP addresses are concerned). Notably, Cloudflare is the only provider with support for a “standard” CNAME record at the root; Cloudflare uses something called “CNAME Flattening” in order to support this feature.

I switched from Cloudflare to deSEC in November 2020. deSEC does not support aliases at the apex (i.e., either a subdomain or an A/AAAA record is required for websites). It's an open issue and eventual support is planned by deSEC. In fact, it'll be supported (at least in the API) as early as winter 2020.

The Domain Name System (DNS) and alias names

The Mastodon poll and upcoming support from deSEC for alias records somewhat change my thinking. I still think the website www. is not deprecated has interesting arguments (both technical and non-technical) in favor of using a www. subdomain. The author argues, for example, that “it serves as a gentle reminder that there are other services than the Web on the Internet. Some of these, such as FTP and DNS, users typically use transparently without even realizing it.”

The main technical argument for a subdomain seems to be that traffic cannot be balanced between a hosting provider's servers (and respective IP addresses) if, for example, the server assigned to an A record is suddenly overwhelmed. In other words: Large sites probably require the redundancy made possible by an alias name (e.g., CNAME record). The hosting provider can then change the IP address of the alias without requiring changes to a customer's A/AAAA records.

Proactively monitoring the A/AAAA records and changing them immediately wouldn't necessarily solve the problem of caching by DNS resolvers. deSEC, for example, requires that DNS records have a minimum time-to-live (TTL) of one hour. Depending on the chosen TTL and whether the TTL is respected, it could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days for the records to propogate fully. In that time, visitors will be directed to the old IP address (i.e., the overwhelmed server).

Cookies

The author of “www. is not deprecated” also mentions cookies under the technical reasons for using www. This argument isn't relevant for my website because I don't need or use cookies. In short, however, the sharing of cookies between the root domain and any subdomains can be complicated.

www.ethanyoo.com

I don't know whether I'll end up switching my personal website from the subdomain https://www.ethanyoo.com to ethanyoo.com. I do know it's very unlikely I'll need load balancing for my personal website. The problem with shared hosting is that it's possible someone else's traffic might overwhelm the server. Assuming all is well with the IP addresses assigned, however, NearlyFreeSpeech.NET says using A/AAAA records “will typically be fine.” I could always wait until alias records at the root are available with deSEC.

I use the canonical name redirection feature from NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, meaning it's a simple setting to switch the canonical (primary) domain. Search engine bots might take some time to index a new canonical domain name, but the 301 redirect used by the setting should guide both them and human visitors to the “correct” URL.

Even though the server's settings will always redirect people to the canonical name, I want to avoid duplicate URLs in the results. As an end user, I think duplicate results look “messy.”

#100DaysToOffload #Day2

You can visit my personal website at ethanyoo.com.

Advantages of one page with “infinite scrolling”

• It allows visitors to “search” (with the “find” function) for keywords across all titles. I wonder how many people would do that.
• It improves the experience for visitors on a mobile device — it can be difficult to select “next” and “previous.”
• Using anchor links and infinite scroll might serve as a suitable HTML-only alternative to pagination.

Disadvantages

• It would require visitors to download all of what was previously multiple pages as one HTML file, which might increase bandwidth usage or loading time. On the other hand, the header and footer will only need to load once for the “Links” section and not for each page.
• The footer won't be visible without scrolling all the way to the bottom. From the basic understanding I have of CSS and HTML, implementing a “Load more” button would require JavaScript. Are anchor links a solution to this problem?
• Trying a different type of pagination, in which “Load more” actually loads a new HTML file with additional posts, is another possibility. Actually doing so might lead to more problems with bandwidth and a poor user experience. See also the previous problem.
• Unless opened in a new tab, returning from a post to the “Links” page will cause visitors to lose their position. I don't want to implement a JavaScript solution.

Other considerations

• Google, DuckDuckGo, and Bing: None of the numbered pages have been indexed as of 2020-12-01, meaning I wouldn't need to add new redirects to .htaccess (which might further increase load times).
• Indexing of numbered pages leads to inaccurate preview text. Each new post changes the content of all numbered pages, which will become more of a problem if multiple pages are indexed. I could always add the numbered pages to my robots.txt file.
• I want to promote user choice to “load more” or visit additional pages.

Writing out all of these factors, I think I'll go with this alternative: Increase the number of posts on each page (currently six). I wonder if I should also add more space between titles.

#100DaysToOffload #Day1

You can visit my personal website at ethanyoo.com.