Looking back at my older blogs and websites

This will be personal

Obviously.

The goal is to learn what I've learned from the past and move on to the present. I am always vulnerable and I am not perfect.

Of course all I am talking about is websites I've abandoned, maybe I should log in one more time to let any viewers know where I am.

Old web host for my webcomic

Everyone has to start.

Youngsters getting into the internet for the first time and also creating their very first website. Humble beginnings.

I've managed to try many "free" hosting services but I would finally attempt to pay for my very first hosting service along with a domain.

Anyway, from what I've viewed on my old blog posts, it seems I like to talk a lot about video games that I've played.

Later on I would discover GNU/Linux and not stop talking about the wonders of open source software. The first OS I've ever used is Ubuntu, it's a classic "first time using Linux" story you'd hear all the time from the past. Now-a-days it seems that other beginner friendly Linux OS would take over that crown.

I talk very little on what happened in real life such as work to weather.

The front page is powered by Wordpress awhile the webcomics are powered by ComicCMS, I would remove that and use ComicPress instead (These two I've mentioned are not recommended due to how seriously outdated they are.) Later on the the webcomics are powered by Poor Man's Comic Publisher (also known as PMCP.)

Eventually I would ditch Wordpress and just present my webcomics at the homepage.

The way I type is cute I guess. Some bit of emotes and internet slang (ex:"ZOMG".)

Blogspot / Blogger

Anyone remember using this?

It's a sketchbook blog. And yeah ... they all have the dreaded "Photobucket" watermark on each image.

Toy (Whoo ... double watermark ... it showcases how truly dated this is.)

I really made sure to post a lot of sketches. Part of me wonder if that is attempting to reach an audience or it's all practice?

DeviantArt

Nothing much actually. I'm only focusing on the journal posts.

It's a combination of games I'm playing and updates on my webcomics.

Though it is slightly entertaining reading about my tech issues dealing with viruses/malware and web hosting.

I think the AI issues is what made others and I just not want to log back in ever again.

Extra: about.me

Most people now-a-days use the following websites to showcase their links of socials and other sites which is carrd.co or linktr.ee which is nice and super easy to use.

But for me back then it was about.me, it is easy to use no doubt. I even have a short URL which is nice. But as time passes on, it'll have the annoying advertisement banner that can show up from top or bottom.

Really need to log in and update it. If you are wondering, I do have carrd.co updated, it just have a single link which is my personal website.

Since I already brought it up. My personal website--awhile bland and boring--does a better job at providing a bunch of link on a single website. It's less than 14kb too, so it should load faster than any of those modern websites.

Another extra: YouTube

For art: Speed paints mostly and at least two videos of me talking about my webcomics in audio awhile having a slideshow playing.

Gaming: I still upload to YouTube if it's anything to do with video games but it's hella rare. One upload per year it feels like. The last video I've released was a 45 minute video about the dark patterns of the game I played a lot of which is PSO2NGS.

Click here if you really want to watch it. Quite happy that it has less than 100 views. Why? I want that video to be a treasure, a nugget. It's very rewarding for someone to find an odd video and suddenly learn a lot from a different perspective.

Either way, I hope to find a PeerTube instance that I join and I'd upload any new videos there rather than YouTube.

Github Pages

This is the one I had to take down. It was mostly a pity type of writing. A lot of complaining.

And awhile it's normal for us to have our ups and downs, I realize this is the first blog website I've created that does not provide any value.

By going by memory I would complain about the following:

I also had a list of indie games and romhacks I wanted to play ... but I never played them.

After having it up for several years, I figured it was time to pull the plug. Besides, I'm not comfortable with GitHub being owned by Microsoft.

The only one positive I can say from all of this, I like the markdown language that is required to type for the blog posts.

Zonelets and what you are reading right now

After GitHub pages, years later, I finally came to a realization that I need a personal website. It's all thanks to 1mb.club. If it wasn't for that website, I'd never have a personal website.

However ... I still want to come back to making a blog again. This time I had a lot of choices to pick. It was either inside my personal website or use other "indie" and minimal style blogs. (Such as smol.pub ,midnight.pub ,and bearblog)

I did use Zonelets for awhile, and made one blog post. The blog post was about that time when TikTok was banned (More like "blocked for 3 hours and then it's unlocked.") I was really hoping that ban would go more than a week but no.

Really I was torn ... I kept searching and searching. I really like Zonelets but the fact that I have to use html tags every single time I needed to write a new blog post is odd and awful.

Thankfully I ended up going with a spiritual successor called Strawberry Starter. What is awesome is how all of the content is on the local hard drive first. Then I can enable a test mode which lets me see what the blog post would like on the web browser. Finally, when it's all done, I can use the upload command on the terminal and it's uploaded to the website. And oh yeah, I don't have to bother with html again, it's all written in Markdown language. Very convenient.

Transformation

So it's interesting how I began.

It was using a mega fancy bloated management system that is called Wordpress. Ditched that because I can't be bothered with plug-ins and security every single day. Also it can be pretty slow, I want my audience to be able to load my website super fast. Had to use ComicsCMS back then because it was the only choice I had.

Then I had switched to minimal barebones type of website that focuses on "content first and everything else second." I think that rule of mine is pretty self explanatory.

Another aspect that I'm loving now is having almost complete control. It used to be that I rely on subdomains, free hosting, content management systems, and other limiting factors. I mean I still use some of them to this day. But somehow, I've reached the point where I can say, "this website is mine, and no one can take it." Also, downloading the whole website is a massive plus, I can switch to any other host if desired.

One of my domains is more than ten years old, I had to finally ditch it because I already own a shorter domain that people can easily remember. I'll make a separate blog post about my domains and hosting.

And I understand that self-hosting is the ultimate way of having 100 percent control but I don't know how I can handle the security side of things to keep the website up.

So, from a bloated website, to a quick loading website. Fantastic.

What I've learned so far

Well ... I've learned that if I want to provide value to the world, I at least have to share experiences and knowledge to the audience. If I just keep making only and I mean only, complaining and whining type of blog posts, it's not really helpful to an extent. Kind of similar of a drunken man who cannot stop talking about his divorce more than 100 times. It's not helpful, we at least understand the pain though.

The way I type now is uhhh ... mature at least? I mean I don't use emotes or any other nonsense that younger users would do. It is still cute how I used to type in my younger years.

The biggest question though ... how much can a person share their issues to the audience? Honestly, I don't know. There are content creators who would still to this day cannot get their act together. And it's even more sad when they get blatantly desperate which is just begging.

I remember DSPGaming keep having to complain again and again to the point where we all just want to tell him that "we don't owe you anything." It's not our fault that you are bad at games. Not our fault that you refuse to save money. Not not our fault that you are not getting the views and subscribers.

But yeah ... I question if it's okay for me to talk about my mental illness. Is that too sensitive to share or not? Will some be turned off because they want to read something positive rather than something that is negative?

I think it doesn't matter anymore, since I am getting older. It's now a matter of time of learning to move on. The past has already happened and there is no way I am going to have access to a time machine.

And yeah "life is never fair" etc. You've heard that line a million times.