the goldilocks blogging platform?

Like many newcomers to the fediverse, I started with a Mastodon account in November 2022. Possibly unlike many fediverse users, I have since moved around to different servers (or 'instances') a lot.

For now I've pretty much settled on an iceshrimp running server, which is software developed from the original Misskey format but is probably now at least three times removed.

I like to try different stuff out, whereas I expect a lot of my followers are happy wherever they first landed and just carry on - and perhaps wonder why they've got multiple instances of 'scribblans' in their follows listing.

When knocking about on the fediverse, I have occasionally discovered mentions of new - or at least new to me - blogging platforms as well. And of course I want to try them out when I see them.

I have had 'messing about' blogs on WordPress - with various different incarnations of me - since 2013, but that platform has got so heavy it's probably bending spacetime around it now. I don't want to spend time 'content managing', and tweaking and designing websites. I just want to publish a quick few words of little consequence to the universe in general, on a passing-fancy and very casual basis, so I've deleted my blogs and account on there entirely.

I mean, you can use WordPress relatively simply, but you sure as hell are not encouraged to do so, and have multiple features you don't want distracting you all over the various interfaces.

I've got a blog on the very simple Mataroa platform, (easy enough markdown-only editor, handy range of useful functionality, not so hot on looks) which I've been using since October now. I have tried out the still new Pika pages as an alternative, and now I'm here also having a look at Scribbles.

On the face of it I want the scribbles.page to work best from me, simply because we must surely have some synergy if my blogging and fediverse names are also based on the word scribble, yes? Albeit mine originally started as 'skryblans', which is the Cornish language word for scribbler or scribe - I use the Anglicised 'scribblans' to make the pronunciation clearer.

I think I've discounted using the Pika platform because that one set off my Privacy Badger browser plug-in when using the editor, which was showing it had blocked a few trackers. I had an email back and forth with the developers over their use of these cookies, and they assured me it was only for both internal and their own marketing purposes, but I'm very wary of the need for that in the first place. 

Just casting my eye up to the ad-blocker and cookie plug-ins of my browser as I write now, and it all looks quiet up there. I see no warning badges on the icons while editing this post, so I hope that's something I can expect to carry on once the full Scribbles product launches. And this of course shows that it can be done perfectly well without them.

Anyway, this post has been both a trial of button pressing and exploration to answer some questions (there is nothing better than a bit of hands-on to really the get the feel of it all... ooh, Matron!) 

Perhaps this is the one that is just right.

I'll press publish now.