Once upon a time many many years ago, there was a little girl who had a dream to start her own webpage where she could rant about the things she felt worth ranting about. She had been thinking about it for quite some time and figured out what would be the sensible thing to do:
- Buy a domain
- Get server hosting
- Self-host your webpage
- Get a self-hosted email with nice @somthing.is behind!
The domain was bought, the server hosting was decided. The domain from just ISNIC, the one that sells the .is topdomain. The server hosting would be 1984.is, a hosting with good reputation. Although the first steps were seemingly easy, her dream gradually became a nightmare as the jungle of Free and Open source forest is not keen on little girls who want to wander around.
After spending weeks trying to learn HTML and CSS, as a responsible blogger should do, she finally gave up and decided to stay away from that path. This was simply not something the little girl wanted to do. The problem solving didn’t give her any pleasure and even though she was learning something, it didn’t give her any joy. It was like for someone who hates going shopping to spend two weeks in a shopping mall, trying on all the clothes. Her frustration was great.
As she was trying to stay away from the closed, from the big and from the dominants of the webpage world, such a tumblr and wordpress, she decided to give Ghost a chance. Sure, free enough, open enough, on github and it actually looked nice. She felt like she’d soon be able to start her own webpage that wouldn’t make all the other girls and boys in school laugh at her.
The first wolf on the road was that it was impossible for the little girl to install it on her computer without help. It was impossible for her to run it without help. It was impossible for her to navigate through the Ghostly forest without attention. Surely, there were some White Riders that offered her help as she was lonely on the dark, cold road to the Free and Open Softwareland. Where beer is free and wasps are bees, rainbows, unicorns and whatnot.
The little girl felt desperate — feeling like she had lost her independence and autonomy on the way, dependent on White Riders of the forest of the Internet, she lost hope. She finally lost hope after weeks of trying and strugging to change background colours or uploading new ghostly themes. The little girl had been trying for years to stay on the side of the freedom, but the road to Commercial Darkness-land was just much faster. More convenient.
There fore, this blog was accidentally born. Not because of longing or want to be yet another wordpress blogger. Nay, the little girl had for a long time tried to stay away from that faith. But in order to be heard, she had to have a voice. WordPress gave her voice, a voice no longer strained by directions on opening terminals and typing something in.
The dream had come true. She had a voice.
Accidentally... 