Who else has brought it back to their own website?
November 1, 2010 10:11 PM Subscribe
Are there any documented examples of people moving from a bunch of 3rd party services like Flickr, Vimeo, or Tumblr "back" to the centralized, does-everything, monolithic my-own-website model?
I'm using a lot of specialized, social, and even commercial services outside of my own website, but they all seem to suck in ways I would normally just fix on my own. Lately, for example, the lack of detailed, realtime visitor stats, or any stats at all, has really been bugging me. Especially with paid services. Sometimes I feel like the idea is just to collect my content and profit, which is a stretch but sort of connects the crappy-features dots.
I've started little moves in the my-own-website(s) direction, and so far the time expenditure hasn't been bad and it's been pretty fun.
Has anybody else on the web jumped back the same way? I can't find any articles but would like to know if the hive panopticon has seen anything.
I'm using a lot of specialized, social, and even commercial services outside of my own website, but they all seem to suck in ways I would normally just fix on my own. Lately, for example, the lack of detailed, realtime visitor stats, or any stats at all, has really been bugging me. Especially with paid services. Sometimes I feel like the idea is just to collect my content and profit, which is a stretch but sort of connects the crappy-features dots.
I've started little moves in the my-own-website(s) direction, and so far the time expenditure hasn't been bad and it's been pretty fun.
Has anybody else on the web jumped back the same way? I can't find any articles but would like to know if the hive panopticon has seen anything.
Best answer: I didn't jump back, but I do regret abandoning the weblog system I wrote myself, piecemeal and crappily. WordPress is very good for what it is, but I have to jump through more hoops to get it to do non-standard things. I could make my old site do something like autopost from 43 Things in exactly the format I wanted with an hour of PHP at most. If I want Wordpress to do that, I search for plugins first, then find none of them are quite what I want, then pick one and try to modify it by reading through its code, then find out it interacts weirdly with my theme, etc.
If I were still blogging daily, I would most roll my own weblog. Given that every web framework gives you a simple blog example as a Hello World, it should be even easier today.
I think 'd still pull in content from other services like Flickr, but I be able to present it however I wanted.
posted by ignignokt at 10:44 PM on November 1, 2010
If I were still blogging daily, I would most roll my own weblog. Given that every web framework gives you a simple blog example as a Hello World, it should be even easier today.
I think 'd still pull in content from other services like Flickr, but I be able to present it however I wanted.
posted by ignignokt at 10:44 PM on November 1, 2010
Best answer: In case you are unaware of this, many outside services have an interface (API) from which you can get the raw data (e.g. the flickr images themselves) and display them on your own site. You still have the advantage of using the specialised services but can also customise the experience. With loads of images for example, you probably do not want to handle the hosting part. Maybe APIs are something you want to look into.
posted by oxit at 11:56 PM on November 1, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by oxit at 11:56 PM on November 1, 2010 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I have (though not well -- my front page is so 1995). I used to have my blog on wordpress.com and my photos on fotki.com. Now they are in my own wordpress and gallery installs on my own domain. The only thing I don't host on my own is videos. I'm still using YouTube. Maybe one of these days I'll see what I can do to move those videos over.
posted by kathrynm at 5:26 AM on November 3, 2010
posted by kathrynm at 5:26 AM on November 3, 2010
Response by poster: Thanks for all the responses. I understand the different POVs a little better now. I understand APIs but haven't worked with them enough -- sounds kinda like it could work against Flickr, though...but maybe I'm thinking of fewer limits than there actually are.
posted by circular at 1:33 PM on November 5, 2010
posted by circular at 1:33 PM on November 5, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by acidic at 10:18 PM on November 1, 2010