Over the last few months, I've been trying to clean up and consolidate my online life. I also want to write more. Lately, I've been reminded why it's important to have a place of my own, that I control, where I can publish anything and everything. In the past I've had multiple domains on multiple platforms serving different purposes. The fragmentation has been a blocker for me to write because every time I feel like writing, I get caught up in where I should write. This new site aims to address that.
As is often the case, I made a list of requirements, over-researched and then over-considered when it came to making a decision about where I would publish and what platform I would use. Like many people that have been publishing online since the dawn of the web, I've been managing my own hosting and domains. While I've enjoyed the control, I just don't want to mess with it anymore. I've been managing hosting and WordPress instances for a number of domains basically since I migrated from Moveable Type to WordPress around 2003. But it's time to let the other sites go and focus on a single domain.
I looked around at a bunch of other platforms like Hugo, Write.as, Listed and even went so far as to stand up my own bare bones, raw HTML site thanks to Derek's encouragement, but decided on WordPress.com. It's similar to the self-hosted WordPress I've been using. I'm just no longer hosting it. Now, instead of paying for my own hosting and having to manage everything, I pay WordPress to host my site. And it costs a lot less in time and money. All I have to do is start writing.
Why I landed on WordPress mostly comes down to my admiration and respect for WordPress' founder Matt Mullenweg and his company Automattic. I appreciate his unwavering desire to make the web a better place through all of the Automattic companies. I've been a long-time customer of a few of them such as Day One, Tumblr and Pocket Casts. They are all champions of supporting open standards and platforms and it feels like WordPress will be around for the long haul. Of course nothing is forever and I rest easy knowing that if I ever want or need to take things elsewhere, I'll be able to do so easily. And keeping everything around after I'm physically gone will be as easy as keeping the billing up-to-date.
So, with all of that out of the way, welcome to the new bradbarrish.com and thanks for reading.
