Mushrooms in Space
Hello internet.
It's the first real mushrooms in space post! Not a test post!
What's the point of this site? Have a read of the About page if you want the long version, but the short version is that I'm on a mission to unenshittify my online life. This is both a testing site and a blog relating to my learning adventures as I try out various things.
I expect to break a lot of stuff along the way. But that's where a lot of the learning is, so I don't mind.
My current task is to move my existing blog.
The round up of what I've done so far is:
- Spent way too much time researching domain registrars and web hosts and their privacy, security, and data sovereignty policies and practices.
- Spent way too much time researching free, open source blogging platforms and finding ones that do have the features that I want and don't have the creepy tracking shit that I hate built in.
- Decided on domain registrar and web host, grabbed an amusing (to me) domain to use as a test site, and set up hosting and an email address.
- Decided on blogging software I'm going to try here. Messed up a lot of stuff setting that up. Made a bunch of test posts. Decided I really like it and I'm gonna keep it.
- Re-familiarised myself with/actually put some effort into things like html, markdown, css, ports, protocols, and whatnot.
Each of these could be, and might end up as, their own post but for now here's the highlights:
Domain registrar and web host requirements
- Domain registrar must have the domain I want at a reasonable price and must have domain privacy because there's no way I'm having my personal details public. Fuck that.
- Web host must have affordable options, including shared hosting but able to upgrade or change, and have acceptable privacy, security, and data sovereignty policies and practices. It matters where the data centres are, but also who the actual owner is (there are too many shit laws being enacted at the moment). Also preferably run on green energy and not "integrating" (aka forcibly shoving down your throat) AI into bloody everything. It also must have a useable interface and be able to do all the things I want to do from a technical perspective.
I'm currently trialling Infomaniak in Switzerland. It's working fine so far.
Blogging platform requirements
- Free, open source, has decent documentation and a not shit admin panel so it's actually useable.
- Relatively stable, not full of security holes, and does not require patching or updating every 3 days.
- Not full of creepy horseshit (I don't want or need cookies, tracking, analytics or any of that stuff) and is compatible with things like GDPR without 900 customisations or plugins.
- Has the functionality that I want - post types, feeds, comments, the ability to make posts and moderate comments via mobile etc.
- Has the layout, themes, and/or ability to customise so I can actually get the look and feel that I want. Preferably without 900 more plugins.
I spent a lot of time looking at blog options and had a list of things to try. A friend of mine recommended Pure Blog. I took a look and I was pretty chuffed. My former blog was running on an obscure wordpress theme I loved, but that seemed hard to replicate elsewhere for whatever reason. Pure Blog had something very similar, but with a few improvements, as a default theme! Praise any and all of the gods! 🤩
I poked around some more and realised that in addition to the theme, it probably offered everything I need. The only thing I'd have to add is Pure Comments, which was by the same dev. That'd be Kev Quirk. Sweeeeeet. I'd try Pure Blog first and if it didn't work for what I wanted, all good, I'd learn some stuff along the way, then move on to the next alternative on my list.
Building the mushroom blog
I will dive into more detail another time, but I've spent the past few days installing Pure Blog, messing it up, fixing it, learning or re-learning things, and arriving at a place I'm pretty happy with for now.
Most of the "messing it up" is because I didn't know some stuff, or haven't tinkered with it in a long time. Someone who knows what they're doing probably wouldn't have encountered those issues, or would have fixed them much quicker than I did. But now I know too. hashtag learning and all that.
I've got the blog, comments (but not the email function), RSS, tag cloud, and blog archive up and running. I used the built in theme editor and some custom CSS to create the bioluminescent fungi theme (and broke everything several times along the way). It was really nice to not have an annoying pop up cookie banner and to put up a cheeky link to a recipe for Anzac cookies instead.
I can't quite work out how to embed the tag cloud and archive on a single page along with search yet, but I'll figure it out eventually. In the meantime I've created a "find" page that links to all three. There's a few other things I want to try (custom layouts, notes etc) and email notifications for comments, but the basics are all there, nobody is going to die if they don't get an email about a reply to a comment, and I'm pretty happy with it so far.
Deciding to keep the mushroom blog
This isn't the blog I was planning to rebuild. I've yet to do that. I will use Pure Blog for that too. That setup should be faster.
It's also not the theme I mentioned earlier. But I've become quite fond of my bioluminescent fungi theme, so it's staying.
This was supposed to just be a test blog to try things out on and I wasn't going to use it for any purpose other than that. But as I set it up and personalised it, I came to quite like it, and I decided to keep it as a place that I can document my adventures in learning various things. I'm also keeping it pretty anon. The other blog is meant to be my space where I share things about my life with people. This has a completely different purpose. Who I am really doesn't matter here. I can just be mushroom girl.