Jackdaw's Nest

Blogging in Context

August 21, 2023

I've decided to take a slightly unconventional approach to blogging in this new site. I decided to have just one long markdown file for each year, and I will just add new posts on the top of that file.

There are a few benefits to this approach that I really like:

  • It's easy to blog in context because I see all the older posts in the same file
  • The markdown file makes sense by itself without any blogging platform

Obviously, there are some downsides as well:

  • Difficult to link directly to a single post (using hash based linking is ok)
  • Sharing a single post in social media can be tricky and platforms will pick up wrong content for preview
  • Cannot create alternative representations of the content like RSS feeds

Especially the lack of RSS feeds bugs me, but I still think that, for me, the pros outweigh the cons. It feels so nice and simple to just write in a text editor and see all my older posts in the same file. Most markdown editors support previewing and the preview looks like a blog should.

Here's the gemtext content file for this blog.