This blog has existed in several forms over the years. It started on WordPress, spent a lot of time on WordPress, then eventually moved to a few different technologies before finally settling on the current setup (Jekyll + Github + Cloudflare Pages).
One thing I never really liked was the various ways blog services supported commenting. WordPress allowed comments, but spam prevention was usually more effort than it was worth, so I moved to using Disqus. Disqus was good but…it still didn’t feel right. I’ve never been one to care all that much about hits/bounce rate/whatever, my blog is as much a public record of my own notes for my own use as it is a place where other people might find helpful stuff too.
When I moved to the current setup of running a static site generator, I had to decide whether to include some fancy off-site comment hosting, roll my own, or try something else. For a while I had no comment system at all, and occasionally someone would find an email address of mine anyway to get in touch. That was always nice.
I ended up going with the banner you see at the bottom of every post now. It works really well. I’ve had a number of people reach out for myriad reasons. Generally it’s to say thanks, for which I am very grateful. Occasionally it’s to let me know that something is either wrong, or was once not wrong but now is because the world has grown, or something else. Irrespective of intent, I always enjoy reading emails from people who have found my posts helpful, or who have bothered to take the effort to let me know there’s an error.
The reason I suspect the banner has worked so well is because I flat out tell the reader I don’t keep analytics or logs (beyond what Cloudflare records by default, not that I’ve ever really looked). If you don’t email me (or toot me on Mastodon) to tell me you read my post, I’ll never know anyone did. That’s okay with me, and probably wouldn’t surprise me…but it’s always a nice feeling when someone tells you they like something you did.
The end. What do you think? Do you have any… (looks down)
Comments/questions
There's no commenting functionality here. If you'd like to comment, please either mention me (@[email protected]) on Mastodon or email me. I don't have any logging or analytics running on this website, so if you found something useful or interesting it would mean a lot to hear from you.