One Year of Independent Blogging
Translated from Chinese by Claude. Read the original
I registered the domain on February 20, 2010. This time last year, after coming back from Shanghai, I set up my own personal independent blog, and I was super excited. Now, I’m in Shanghai.
I once thought about writing a post on what I’ve learned building a site, but I decided against it. I’m no site-building guru. The real gurus all keep quiet, living on the web, low-key, writing their own code and charting their own path.
One year of independent blogging. I’ve actually gained a lot this year. First, I got to know a whole lot of fellow independent bloggers, and I got into HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL. I got a rough grasp of WordPress theme design and WordPress customization, and from building the site I even made a bit of money.
The road of an independent blog is a hard one, and pretty complicated. This time last year I bought hosting and a domain. The hosting was from 5V55 and the domain from Xinnet. Back then I didn’t know what GoDaddy was, what PHP hosting was, what a Linux host was. I was a total newbie who knew nothing. I remember when I was still in school, I’d stay up until 3 a.m. fighting with problems on my blog, and so on. Later I moved the domain to GoDaddy and switched the hosting to a VPS.
This year I switched WordPress themes 5 times, and two of them were my own. When I first started I knew nothing, not even HTML. Later, with guidance from online friends and my own digging, I slowly learned how to design and modify themes. WhiteLove is one theme I released.
Going from independent blogging to building sites, I learned what an impetuous world the internet is. Some people just love to show off, and some people stay very low-key. The show-offs end up badly; the low-key ones do well.
For the blog’s first anniversary, I thought about holding some kind of event, but I gave up on the idea because I don’t have the time right now, so no event.
Because WordPress.com is in a bad way in mainland China, a huge number of independent blogs sprang up. Some people build sites not for fun but for money. But money is very real, and very dirty. Some people who can’t build sites listen to the sales pitches of people who can, and slowly all their money gets hustled away, and in the end they have nothing to show for it. It’s a vicious circle online that many people find hard to escape, and in the end they not only waste their money but also lose a site that could have had a really bright future.
I’ve drifted pretty far from independent blogging. Actually there’s a lot more I could say, but some of it I’d rather not.
One year of independent blogging. Not a long time, but the road is long.
Writing the blog has gotten a bit tiring lately, but I’ll keep at it.