A favorite author of mine, John Scalzi, wrote the following on his blog recently and it’s reminds me of the value in owning your own space on the Internet. No matter the profession or who you are it is valuable to have a place you can host a simple site, or post what you want in your own words without intervention from an algorithm.

Your platform, one post a week. It’s not too hard, and the upside is less reliance on other people’s platforms, and a healthier, more varied Web. Stay on social media! Make it work for you, not you work for it.

Now the best way to do this would be to setup your own web server and host your own website though that is more lift than you would necessarily need after going right from hosting on social media to writing on your own space. There are plenty of old school blog hosts that would work to setup your own site quickly.

  • Blogger An original blog host, which Google bought a long time ago. I hosted my writing their on and off for years from 2008 - 2019. The tools are fine; has is a mobile app though is still very blog-like from the 2000s. The service is free and is powered by ads.

Whether sharing your expertise, breaking news, or whatever’s on your mind, you’re in good company on Blogger. Sign up to discover why millions of people have published their passions here.

  • Wordpress This perhaps the best host among the bunch for simple set-up and for having a great mobile app and also a vibrant 3rd party app ecosystem. The company that owns Wordpress, Automattic, is fantastic and has committed to building great tools. Much of the web is powered by Wordpress and you can make a fancy website, but you can also make a simple blog. The service is freemium with ads on the site if you don’t pay and features like domain hosting costing extra.

Build a site. Sell your stuff. Start a blog. And so much more. All on WordPress.com

  • Tumblr Tumblr is a social blog site that hosts a blog though also have a social aspect, which you can dive into as needed/desired. This is where I host my writing as it allows for domain hosting and after a tumultuous ownership shakeup is now owned by Automattic, which also owns Wordpress. They have a mobile app and support themselves through ads though the 3rd party app ecosystem is not as vibrant as Wordpress.[^1 On a personal workflow note, my beloved app for posting has been in purgatory, for several years and the Tumblr iOS app does not support Markdown. Ideally, I would want to write everything in Markdown and store a text copy for myself locally for reference and also in case I need to transfer services (which I have done more than once.)]

Tumblr is a website. Social network? No, it’s a mycelial network. It’s wholesome chaos. It’s the gay people in your phone. It’s your angel. It’s your devil. Tumblr is whatever you want it to be.

There are also other tools like Wix, Weebly, or Micro.blog as well hosting your own site on a server too.