I've migrated to Bear Blog for the home of Tony Tries Stuff!
After a bit of deliberation, I decided to move my blog over to Bear Blog. This decision came primarily so that I could use the domain I pay money for every year tonytriesstuff.com. In addition, I also wanted to host Tony Tries Stuff somewhere where I could just focus on the writing rather than the marketing and potential monetary benefit.
Why did I choose to move?
If you look at blog.tonytriesstuff.com on Wayback Machine on 01 May 2022, you will see that tonytriesstuff.com was used once upon a time. That's because it was hosted on Get Revue, a newsletter platform once (key word) owned by the company that used to be known as Twitter.
Then one day, they decided to axe the program in January 20231. When they did, my blog went with it. And then I migrated to Substack.
My website back in May 2022
Substack is a fantastic platform to host newsletters and blogs. They have enabled countless writers to make a living from writing. And their business model is such that they only make money IF the writers make money2.
So unwillingly, they are incentivised to prioritise their writers who make them money. This has meant the introduction of features that weren't to my liking. They introduced Notes, a feed similar to Twitter which encouraged posting short form content regularly.
And then one day when I was contemplating starting a new blog, instead of creating it on Substack, I instead decided to check my favourite app finding website, AlternativeTo, for alternatives to Substack.
That's when I stumbled across Bear Blog.
Wait ... what is Bear Blog
Bear blog is defined as a privacy-first, no-nonsense, super-fast blogging platform3. It was built by Herman Martinus, a developer living in Cape Town. It is simple enough to be easy to work with while also being powerful enough to compete with similar offerings on the market.
These are the main features that caught my attention:
- Open source: Bear is open source meaning it source code can be inspected, modified and enhanced by anyone4.
- Built to last forever: The creator of Bear Blog, Herman, designed and built bear to last forever5.
- No subscriptions: Bear Blog gives the option to pay a one time fee to provide additional functionality like uploading images and linking your domain.
Is anything changing?
Well hopefully yes! I hope to post more consistently and document more of my philosophy, travel and recommendations on the internet! And maybe one day even translate it into many languages!
Hope you enjoyed this edition of Tony Tries Stuff. If you did, be sure to hit the upvote button. And if you would like to see more, subscribe using RSS or share this with others!
Until next time,
Tony
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