Welcome to my independent blog.

If you’ve arrived here from my other site, you’ll already know that I write a lot.

If you haven’t, here’s the short version: I’m a retired technology guy who likes writing, learning new things, and occasionally asking questions that turn into much bigger projects than I originally intended.

This site is one of those projects.

I wanted to find out what it would be like to build and run a blog without WordPress.

Not because WordPress is bad.

Actually, quite the opposite. WordPress is incredibly powerful, and I’m still using it.

I just wanted to know what was on the other side of the fence.

It Started With a Google Search

The whole thing started with a simple question:

Where do blogs get hosted besides WordPress or Blogger?

The answer surprised me.

You don’t actually need a traditional blogging platform.

You can build a blog yourself.

That immediately led to another question:

How?

And that’s when the rabbit hole opened.

I started researching static websites, Git, GitHub, HTML, CSS, hosting, SEO, analytics, and everything else involved in putting together a site without a traditional content-management system.

I also started asking ChatGPT a lot of questions.

A lot.

What I expected to be a small project eventually turned into roughly 40 hours of experimenting, learning, fixing things, rebuilding things, and occasionally questioning my own decision-making.

Fortunately, my background with technology and source-control tools meant I wasn’t starting from zero.

But there was still plenty to learn.

And that’s really the point of this site.

What I Wanted to Learn

When you use a platform like WordPress, a tremendous amount happens behind the scenes for you.

That’s convenient.

It’s also easy to forget how much is actually happening.

With an independent blog, I have to understand much more of it myself.

The website is built from files.

I control those files.

I control the HTML and CSS.

I control the structure.

I control the content.

I can experiment with SEO without wondering whether a plugin, theme, or platform feature is getting in the way.

That doesn’t necessarily make an independent blog better.

It makes it mine.

And for someone who enjoys learning how things work, that’s a pretty good reason to build one.

The Trade-Off There is, of course, a downside.

WordPress provides an entire ecosystem.

You get themes, plugins, analytics tools, subscribers, readers, comments, recommendations, and a huge community.

An independent blog doesn’t automatically give you any of that.

If someone discovers this site, they’ll probably have found it through search, a link, social media, or something I’ve done to bring people here.

There isn’t an ecosystem waiting to send readers my way.

That’s actually part of the experiment.

Can I build an audience independently?

Can good content, SEO, persistence, and a little technical knowledge generate traffic without relying on a blogging platform’s built-in audience?

I have no idea.

I’m going to find out.

This Is an Experiment I’m not abandoning my WordPress blog.

I’m keeping it and continuing to publish there.

Instead, I’ll be using this site alongside it.

Some of the content here will be adapted from posts I’ve already published. Some will be completely original.

That gives me a chance to compare the two approaches.

I’ll be able to see how search traffic develops, what readers respond to, how SEO performs, and what happens when the entire operation is essentially just me and the website.

There is something appealing about that.

No platform deciding where my content belongs.

No plugin required to make the basic site work.

No complicated ecosystem.

Just a website, the content, and the person responsible for keeping it running.

Me.

Which is both liberating and slightly terrifying.

And Then There Is Phase Two Of course, once I got the basic site working, I had another thought:

Can I add comments and likes?

Yes.

Apparently I can.

It just takes more work.

Which means I will probably try it.

This is how these things happen.

You start with:

“I wonder if I can build a blog?”

Forty hours later you’re researching comment systems.

I’ve apparently learned nothing about leaving well enough alone.

Why You’re Here This site is going to evolve.

There will be recycled content, original writing, experiments with SEO, technical experiments, and probably a few things I haven’t thought of yet.

I’m not trying to prove that independent blogging is better than WordPress.

I’m trying to learn whether it works for me.

And maybe that’s one of the more interesting things about building something independently.

You don’t have to build the biggest site.

You don’t have to turn it into a business.

You don’t even have to know exactly where it’s going.

Sometimes it’s enough to ask:

“Can I do this myself?”

Then give it a shot.

That’s what this site is.

An experiment in independent blogging, a place to write, and another excuse for me to keep learning.

Welcome.

Let’s see where it goes.