Micro Blogging on MereCivilian.com
For the past 4-6 weeks, I have been trialling Micro.blog platform which I approached as a twitter alternative. A world that is a lot quieter than twitter but has a community vibe and a sense of togetherness even though I personally do not know a single person on Micro.blog.
My trial ended and I did not sign up for their $5 a month plan. Make no mistake, that $5 a month includes hosting your own blog. Considering this, Micro.blog is very generous. I enjoyed my time there so much that I even considered moving there entirely. Meaning, hosting MereCivilian.com on micro.blog. My love for the Ghost blogging platform is the single reason I am still here.
Micro.blog may not be the best platform for medium to long form writing but it’s perfect for micro blog posts (no kidding, right 😝). There are number of times when I want to write but the content isn’t appropriate to dedicate an entire blogpost on. This is where micro blog posts come into play and I am trialling micro blog posts on MereCivilian.com. I have settled on not posting these micro blogposts on the main homepage but rather give them a dedicated space on MereCivilian. This keeps the main home page focused on featured articles.
Micro.blog does have a free plan, but one cannot post with a free plan. One is limited to replying to other people’s post. However, even on a free plan, it can fetch from your website and post on Micro.blog. The reason being these posts are not hosted with them but rather linked to my website.
Therefore, my micro blogposts can be found here, and the specific RSS feed is here. This feed will also cross post to Micro.blog (follow me there or subscribe to the specific RSS feed for micro-posts)
I am interested to see how it turns out.
How am I doing this?
Any posts on my MereCivilian.com with a tag 🏷 mb will not be visible on the homepage. Ghost supports dynamic routing and after many attempts, I managed to tailor it to my use case.
My routes.yaml file:
Details:
My Micro.blog - https://micro.blog/MereCivilian
My micro blogposts - https://merecivilian.com/micro
RSS feed for micro blogposts - https://merecivilian.com/micro/rss/
Thoughts on micro.blog
Micro.blog does not reveal followers or follower counts. They reveal who you are following, which you have control over. It helps other micro bloggers find new people to follow. This is fantastic. No judging anyone by the number of followers they have. Micro.blog does not have likes or retweets. They are of the view that if you like someone’s post, you can reply and tell them. This is what humans do in real life. This is one of the reasons, why micro.blog feels like a community compared to twitter which feels like a platform where your view is only important if you have a huge follower count.