Category: Web

I’ve been playing around with Substack for a little while now and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I will not be sticking with it.

Yes, I essentially wanted a free platform that I could transition to, so as to keep my costs down but it just doesn’t seem worth it.

Some of the primary reasons for this are as follows.

1. I think the type of audience I want to reach really isn’t on it.
2. The formatting options are pretty limited, sometimes even more limited than Medium.com.
3. I really don’t like the way the notes function, as I find them much more limiting that Twitter tweets (i.e. teeny tiny previews for non-substack articles).
4. I want some additional features that I think only a more feature rich platform like WordPress can achieve.

So what am I going to do instead?

1. I think I’ll stick with WordPress for now, regardless of my hosting fees.
2. I’ll look at sharing my posts on a social network instead, perhaps like Twitter or Mastodon.

Basically, from my past experiences on Twitter, I think my posts would actually connect with more like-minded individuals there or perhaps on Mastodon even.

I’ve been reflecting on how I share my conversations with AI and I’ve obviously known for some time that they can be overwhelming due to their length.

In reviewing some of my latest conversations though, I’ve noticed that I’ve been using pull quotes to emphasize the key points of the conversation. This got me thinking though and asking the question, “Why don’t I just display my AI conversations in the same way I share an article I’ve read?” In effect, I normally just provide a link to the article, include a few quotes from it and then provide my interpretation of it, its meaning. And I could do the exact same thing with the AI conversations I have.

In this way, the post on my site isn’t overloaded by the AI conversation itself but rather highlights the key points of the conversation and why those words have particular meaning for me.

The only question though is where do I put the AI conversation itself? In other words, I don’t want to link to ChatGPT itself but rather archive the conversation itself somehow on my site, maybe as a PDF.

Alternatively I could just still post the whole conversation as a post but then following it up with an additional overview post that highlights the key points of it and meaning.

Not 100% sure at this point.

Actually here’s a quick mockup to provide an example of what I was talking about in my last post. It’s a link to the 2020s as a decade view currently in progress.

At the top would be a short general overview of the decade so far but at the end of the decade it would link to a comprehensive decade review. But below it is also a link to each year in that decade, such as 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and now 2025.

And when you click on those years, the very last post of the year would be the yearly review which would be the first thing you see (as it is reverse chronological).

And each yearly review would also provide an overview of that year month by month with a link to each month and the monthly review for each month being the first thing seen for that month.

Wait a minute! I just realized something else.

Obviously there would be a life view as well and it would probably look similar to my narrative progression (aka my backstory) that you can see on my About page (i.e. Work Isn’t Working, The Future of Work, Creativity, Vertical Development, Life as a Role-Playing Game). But it would be broken down into decades with different descriptors applied to each decade.

Here’s an example below.

Life View

1960s – Nature (?)

1970s – Gaming

1980s – Computers

1990s – Web / Communities / Culture

2000s – Work Isn’t Working / The Future of Work

2010s – Creativity / Vertical Development

2020s – Life As a Role-Playing Game

And note the descriptors don’t fit perfectly to each decade, although they most definitely fit the decade that they fully emerged to the point that I became aware of them. For example, I didn’t realize I was researching “The Future of Work” until near the end of the 2000s, even though I was playing and experimenting with concepts relating to it within the early 2000s.

In effect, as usual in my life, often I was doing things before I realized there was a “name” for what I was doing. Often I was just being me and doing things related to my being. For example, when I was building communities online in the 1990s and 2000s, I was often utilizing techniques to manage them that only later I realized mirrored how Future of Work organizations functioned (i.e. more self-organizing, less command and control).

Back in October 2005, I wrote the following post entitled What’s Next 2.0?

It looks like Everybody 2.0 and their Dog 2.0 is coming up with another 2.0 buzzword similar to Web 2.0. I guess I’ll add to the party and talk about the cultural paradigm shift that is occurring right now and call that Culture 2.0. Hopefully when this is completed we will have Society 2.0, not to mention Business 2.0 (for real this time!), where people will actually have Compassion 2.0 for one another and works towards a better World 2.0. Did I miss anything…2.0?

Why I want to highlight this is because it emphasizes a frustration I’ve always had with trying to categorize information on my website.

Like seriously, I could easily categorize this post with the following categories: culture, community, identity, and web. But what I just realized was that these categories as a collective whole emphasized my overall frustration that work wasn’t working anymore (i.e. the conventional concept of it) and it needed a reboot along with a new paradigm.

In fact, my more current categories like the future of work, creativity, vertical development, and even life as a role-playing game, really all just reiterate this same narrative. And that narrative is working isn’t working anymore and we need a new paradigm or more appropriately a new worldview for it.

But if I was going to expand up this, I’d say that the core of this new worldview is one in which it requires us to not just go beyond the conventional concept of work but also beyond the conventional concept of learning and playing as well.

Or if I was going to put it a different way, I’d say it was about reinventing learning and working using and embodying the very principles of playing.

All said and done though, this just emphasizes something in terms of my categorization. That it seems pointless to do so.

Don’t get me wrong. I want to provide an overarching view of my lifelong growth and development, highlighting these different domains of knowledge that I’ve leaped between over the years. But the key thing to realize here is that I’m not leaving behind a knowledge domain when I jump to a new one. Rather I’m collectively trying to synthesize them all into this larger narrative, with each new domain helping to clarify it overall.

This is why categorizing my posts seems pointless to me because my most current ones would effectively be utilizing all the categories I’ve created to date. That’s because creating a new paradigm for living effectively embodies all of the knowledge I’ve explored to date.

For example, computers as a knowledge domain isn’t left behind because this new paradigm utilizes computers (such as note-taking and AI) to help us understand ourselves better. And the web as a knowledge domain isn’t left behind because it’s about sharing our growth and development online, so that others can see which direction you’re adventuring in within life and decide if they want to go in the same direction, thus potentially creating a collaboration and cooperation between you and others.

Again all of these domains of knowledge I’ve explored over the years aren’t separate disciplinary silos of thought. These domains of knowledge are instead used in a transdisciplinary way, as they are all interconnected and essentially interdependent upon each other to help create this new paradigm and new worldview.

In writing my last post about redesigning my website, something dawned on me. I’m noticing a pattern emerging from posts, both in the present and in the past.

Basically I have three types of posts.

Note posts are short form content, usually emphasizing a single block of content (i.e. video, music, quote).

Journal posts are intermediate in size (i.e. a handful of paragraphs) and don’t have a featured image or intro text excerpt. This post itself would be considered as such. It’s basically jotting down a thought or idea as it occurs to you.

Article posts are long form, usually including a featured image and an intro text excerpt describing it. This is a thought or idea explored in detail.

All that said, if I following this pattern that is already emerging, I really don’t need to stylize or structure my content any more than it needs to be. If anything, it’s more about pacing the rhythm of the different post types so they accent one another.

I’m still playing around with my website and I’m making headway but I’m also still hitting roadblocks.

What I’m noticing is that I like the single post view on my website, like when you click on an article to view it by itself.

However I’m still not liking my blog list view, as it feels very busy and overwhelming to read and follow.

I think this is because I’m still trying to determine how to best include short form content vs long form content.

In effect, should short form content be completely separated on its own page? Or should it be integrated alongside the long form content?

Previously I integrated it within my blog list view, such as displaying movies and music posts, because I found that the short form content provided a nice break from the long form content.

However, I think the primary issue I’m experiencing right now is that some of my posts are extremely long, such as my conversations with ChatGPT. Even more so, these chats are technically considered short form content (i.e. sharing a chat similar to sharing an article link).

What’s weird though is that if I go back and look at the blog list view of older posts, like when I first started my website, it looks fine. I think this is because most of my content was shorter posts of just a few paragraphs of text with the occasional long form post.

And finally, I’m still not really sure about using categories. In effect, even though my progression over the years has progressed from one domain of knowledge to another (i.e. games, computers, web, community, culture, etc), I often have a hard time trying to categorize a post and stick it within a set silo, when it feels like it could apply to many different things at once.

Yet at the same time, categorizing a post as a “movie” or “music” seems completely normal and fine.

All said and done, while I enjoy design and styling my website, I think my greatest difficulty is organizing and structuring content.

For years, even decades, I’ve wanted my website to emulate what most people can easily do on social media networks in terms of being able to quickly and easily add different post types (i.e. links, quotes, images, videos, etc) which are effectively short-forms of content versus the typical long-form.

While WordPress used to have this feature prior to Gutenberg, calling it Post Formats, it eventually disappeared from a lot of more modern block-based themes, thus dashing my hopes that Gutenberg would actually make it easier to emulate post formats.

Today, however, after doing a bit of digging, I discovered that there seems to be a resurgence of utilizing post formats once again. And I believe that Nick Bohle’s words below really drive home the reason why.

Since “Social media isn’t social anymore”, the (grassroots) movement of having your website as your personal hub on the internet is gaining more momentum…

Post formats can assist WordPress (e.g. the ActivityPub plugin) in translating posts into activities (such as notes, images, articles, or quotes) and federating them to platforms like Mastodon or PixelFed.

Nick Bohle
WordPress, Post Format and Default Themes

But beyond Nick’s words, a lot of other people also seemed to want to reintegrate post formats back into WordPress, based upon this Bring Post Formats to Block Themes GitHub discussion which was originally created in 2023 but went well into 2024.

Due to this discussion (and probably others), I believe this is why post formats were re-introduced back into the current Twenty Twenty-Five theme, which is amazing to say the least.

As I originally stated, my main desire for using post formats again is because of their ability to easily and quickly share short-form content, while your mind ruminates on what long-form content you’d like to write about it.

And sharing this short-form content is extremely important to me because probably 90% or more of my daily work is based upon these small pieces, loosely joining and creating long-form ideas and thoughts.

To put this another way, this short-form content is really where the creativity happens in my work, yet its completely invisible to most people. They just see a long-form post instead and might be perplexed how I got to that point or made that leap of logic.

That said though, it’s important that this short-form content doesn’t overload and drown out my long-form content. Thus I need to create links that filter out and separate my short-form content from my long-form content, thus allowing people to see what I’m narrowing in on (i.e short-form) or stepping back and seeing a bigger picture of (i.e. long-form).

To put this another way, I want to visibly show how things bubble up and emerge within my mind.

That’s it for now and it definitely won’t be all sun and roses. While I’ve created quotes, links, videos, and aside post formats for now, really the hard work will be trying to bend the Twenty Twenty-Five theme to my will and get it to work the way I want it to because I’ve played with it in the past and the basic styling and structuring is not playing nice and working like I logically expect it to (perhaps due to earlier bugs I experienced before).

If it doesn’t work out the way I want it to, I may try another modern WordPress theme that is more flexible and also includes post formats.

Update: While the Twenty Twenty-Five theme is a vast improvement over previous themes, the poor usability especially within the Site Editor is still holding me back from fully embracing it and using it. So for now, I’m sticking with the Twenty Twenty theme which I still find immensely usable, especially when combined with the Twentig plugin. To get post format compatibility, I just added some PHP code to enable it within the theme.

Since “Social media isn’t social anymore”, the (grassroots) movement of having your website as your personal hub on the internet is gaining more momentum, along with the principles of POSSE and the growing popularity of the Fediverse. Consequently, post formats are becoming increasingly important once again.

• Post formats as a taxonomy. In WordPress, a taxonomy is a system for organizing and classifying content. The two main taxonomies are categories and tags, with bases /category/ and /tag/ respectively. As more varied non-standard content is published, post formats—if registered via a child theme or plugin—can serve as a third taxonomy with the base /type/.
• Fediverse interaction. Post formats can assist WordPress (e.g. the ActivityPub plugin) in translating posts into activities (such as notes, images, articles, or quotes) and federating them to platforms like Mastodonor PixelFed.

Nick Bohle
WordPress, Post Format and Default Themes

Imagine you’re on the outside bend of a river bank. As you stand upon it, you see the center of the river flowing rapidly by. Every few moments, you may get the glimpse of something in the river, as it quickly passes by, but before you can make sense of it, it is gone.

As you move your gaze closer to you, you see the slower edge of the riverbank and a few things flowing by within it. Due to their slower speed in the river, you actually have the time to make sense of them in greater detail.

Finally as you move your gaze even closer to you, you see the sediment from the river washing up along the outer bend of the river, creating a place upon which you can stand upon. Upon this spot, you see an object that has washed up upon the shore and you can actually walk around it, gaining a way to fully make sense of it in a way you couldn’t before.

What I’ve described here is what I’m want to create with my site.

In effect, most people posting on social media are like the fast flowing river. Other people read it and if they’re lucky, they gain a glimpse of something.

People posting on blogs are like the outer, slower edge of the river. The posts are slower, less frequent, and allow you to gain a glimpse of something larger.

People who write books are like the bank of the river. They fully give you to time and space to walk around something and fully understand it as a whole.

The problem with these approaches is that they are being kept separate, instead of being integrated as a whole process and framework for exploring and discovering life. When they do work together, I believe that’s when we gain the capacity to understand life in a much deeper way.

Here’s another way of looking at it that revealed itself to me when I read Dave Gray’s book Liminal Thinking. It was Dave describing how surface beliefs often relate back to a deeper governing belief, that forms the cornerstone of your identity that you stand upon.

Pema Chödrön describes this deeper state of being as an awakened mind. In effect, when you still the mind, its muddiness or fog clears and you can descend into its depths of yourself, like climbing a mountain towards the center of the earth or more aptly towards the center of your Self.

In vertical development, it’s an evolved state and stage of being where one sees within, around, and below all things.

What I’ve realized is that I spend most of my time at the base and middle heights of this mountain, trying to find my way up it and occasionally getting a glimpse from the top but then I lose my footing and fall back down.

What I feel like I need to do is to build up the base so that I get a surer footing at the middle heights. And then build up the middle heights, so that I get a surer footing for standing at the top.

To put this another way, my daily activities swarm around superficial activities coming across news articles and papers that I find that relate to my life’s work. I extract quotes from these articles and papers which help me to understand patterns and over time I can see relationships between the patterns.

But when these build up to allow me to get to the top and see the bigger picture, it’s not a solid footing enough to allow me to fully stop and look down the mountain to see how everything connects up in the opposite way.

So what I want is something that shows at least three perspectives. Many superficial perspectives from daily notes that I create from articles and papers. A fewer midpoint perspectives from my journal. And an upper bigger picture perspective from my like a living book perspective, that is being created from my explorations and discover as a whole.

But just as a said above, the flow or perspective of the process can’t just be one way.

It’s not about just seeing how the daily notes link to midpoint journal perspectives which lead to the upper bigger picture.

I need to be able to stand at the upper point and see how things link up backwards, connecting up, and making sense.

In effect, these higher vantage points are effectively principles for life. So I can have a place where I can relay these points of vantage and wisdom on my site and then the person reading them can “walk down the mountain,” seeing the substructure underneath them and how they all connect up to their daily life at the base of the mountain (by reading the daily notes that relate to them).