Why I'm Building on My Own Website Again

I've been building websites for about thirty years. In that time, I've watched a lot of places where people gathered online come and go.

Message boards. Chat rooms. A few social networks that everybody was on until suddenly nobody was. Every time one of them faded, the people in it scattered, and so did everything they'd made there.

So here's the plan going forward: samxers.com is home base.

Rented land

Posting on a big platform is like setting up shop in somebody else's mall. The foot traffic is great. But they set the rent, they set the hours, and they can change the rules whenever they want. They decide who sees what you post. One day your stuff reaches lots of people. The next day it reaches a fraction of them, and nobody tells you why.

That's not a conspiracy. It's just how it works when you don't own the building.

Owned land

A website you control is different. Nobody can turn down the reach on it. Nobody can delete it because an automated filter got confused. If you sign up for the newsletter, the email shows up in your inbox. The address doesn't change because a company changed its mind.

It's smaller. It's slower. It's mine. And it's the same reason GenX Alliance moved to its own forum at genx.forum instead of renting space somewhere else.

What that means here

• The good stuff lives here first. Monologues, rants, how-tos, build logs and whatever else I'm thinking about.
• Social media is the front porch. I'll still post there. It's a great place to be found. It's a terrible place to live.
• The newsletter is the direct line. The Detention Slip goes straight to your inbox with no algorithm in the middle.

If you've got something you've built, a business, a hobby, a community, I'd tell you the same thing. Be everywhere you want. Just make sure there's one place you own.

Try the simulator below. It's a joke. Mostly.