the Cookies of Discontent

A Skateboarding Zine

Your own damn website

One reason we started this site was to provide an example of a skateboarding site that isn't just an "account" on YouTube or some social media site.

Yeah, we have some philosophical issues with that stuff...

All those companies are evil, and they are owned by evil scumbags
Using them, in the end, enriches evil. We don't want that, do we?

However, there are solid, practical reasons for having your own site, in case fighting evil isn't good enough for you.

"Your" social media account or YouTube account isn't really "yours." They can do anything with it.
Since it isn't yours, they can tell YOU what you can and can't do with it.
Social media accounts can be disappeared over night. Example: the very poplar Google Groups system was eliminated even thought is was good, very popular, and people were depending on it. Over - fucking - night pretty much.
With social media accounts, and "channels" on a place like YouTube, you have no dependable, portable online identity.

A better way to do things, if you care about such things, is to adhere to IndieWeb principles. The idea is to own your own domain name, own your own data, and own your online identity.

Now, we did this site the super oldschool way intentionally. There are other ways of creating a site more easily. And by easily, I mean you can create the site almost instantly.

Note: We do, in fact, advocate paying for services if you can. For better or worse we live in a capitalist society. If you are a paying customer, you have at least some power and influence with your host. If they take a turn for the worse you can redirect your domain name to a new host and move your blog there. While there are free alternatives, once again "free" means it's not really yours. Consider the yearly cost. Probably a max of $20 per year for a domain name. About $5 a month for hosting. So $70 a year or less to have your own site, that you own, with your own domain name. Tha's pretty good.

Create Your Blog

Step 1: Get a Domain Name

You can buy a domain name, like we did for CookiesOfDiscontent.org, using a site like networksolutions, very easily. You are really just renting the name. No one really owns a domain name. There's a yearly charge. That's the best you can do. The good news is the charge is usually less than $20 a year. Then when you set up your blog or site you will be able to connect your domain name to the site pretty easily.

Step 2: Build a blog

A blog is simple a chronological set of posts you make on a website. Like an online journal. You can make it simple like that, or more complex.

Simple is nice to start.

Connect your domain name to the blog.

Here are our recommendations for blog hosts:

micro.blog - you an host a blog for as little as $1 per month. $5 gets you the full package. We all use it for sites like bloftin2.blog and it is great. Allows you to host videos of up to 75 megs. That is usually for 1-2 minutes of video. They are working on expanding this. Amazing value.
bearblog.dev: A great value for $5 per month. Allows video posting, but I can't tell how much.
pika.page: a simple little blog for $6 a month, with nice clean themes. They don't seem to allow video uploading at this point.

Step 3: GO!

Now, start writing, posting pics, posting videos. Have fun. Let your friends know about your blog. Let us know and we'll put a link here on this site. That's how the web was before the business scumbags ruined it.

In the next issue we'll discuss how to follow blogs using RSS feeds, so you can easily subscribe to and keep up with them, and when to use social media for your own purposes.