To Fork or Not to Fork

I’ve been working on a new blog and I keep running into the same question, so I figure I’ll pose it to you, my loyal readers (umm, I think, I actually have no idea who reads my blog and I’m OK with that). Should I start a new blog for just technical nerdy web bits or keep everything together? I’ve been itching to write longer articles on topics and I feel limited by the current layout (which I love for entirely different reasons and don’t see changing in the near future). A long article about CSS doesn’t really fit in half a page.\
What do you think? Should I start a new blog or just tweak this one? Do you read this blog because you’re my friend and we know each other in “meatspace”, or for some other reason?

Published
Categorized as blogging

By Kevin Lawver

Web developer, Software Engineer @ Gusto, Co-founder @ TechSAV, husband, father, aspiring social capitalist and troublemaker.

10 comments

  1. Maybe just in the case of really long geeky entries you could use a message summary for display on the home page, with a “continue reading” link to the full post on its own page.

  2. Maybe just in the case of really long geeky entries you could use a message summary for display on the home page, with a “continue reading” link to the full post on its own page.
    Mmm… barbecued meatspace…

  3. Weird… I didn’t see that first post submit… Now I look like a big dork posting multiple times. Oh wait, now it’s even worse… dammit.

  4. Yea, what Porter said. Don’t make multiple blogs. You are one man; you should have one blog.

  5. Honestly, I have no idea why I read your blog. You must have said something about widgets at some point. Anyway, don’t split it on my behalf. I can skip long tech items, it won’t bother me. Or maybe I’ll just read them.

  6. My two cents: unless you’re driving a lot of ad revenue and are looking for an SEO-based edge (more relevant domain name for the niche subject of your new blog, etc.), don’t start a new blog.
    Another reason to start a new blog: your posting frequency is high enough that you’d have frequent enough posts on your old and new blogs to keep an audience on each.

  7. If your only worried about posts fitting pages, you could create a tab, with a single category viewed, for all your long-winded technical posts people like me are interested in reading more of. 🙂 But I’d get them in my feed reader in full anyway…
    Personally, a long time ago I learnt that allowing myself multiple spaces in which to post different streams of thought helps me no end. It affords me the luxury of creating different environments in which to communicate with different groups of people. With one blog I often found myself writing to only one audience limiting my personal avenues of exploration. While I may not update all my spaces all that often, and some I end up completely moving on from. What I find important is having them there when I need them, when the urge arises, as having that has removed that niggling thought from the back of my mind to fork or not. My new niggling thoughts now all relate to my blog(s) lack of usability as a single entity knowledge base not to mention its work-flow and lack of out-of-the-box collaboration capabilities(I really like the husband/wife blog layout btw).
    I actually subscribed to you to learn about aimpages and the modulet microformat for a personal project I have, but am finding I enjoy reading Jen’s adventures too. 🙂

  8. _but am finding I enjoy reading Jen’s adventures too. :)_
    I have a fan! Wooohooooo! Go me!
    (hmm, now I have to go back and read what I have been writing recently.)

Comments are closed.