(1) What platform should I start?
(2) How to not lose to a big player (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41712885)
(3) if possible - how not to allow AI to steal my work?
To block AI bots, you'll need to add known AI bots[1] to your blog's robots.txt file [2].
[1] https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt/blob/main/rob...
[2] https://docs.bearblog.dev/neat-bear-features/#edit-robotstxt or https://ghost.org/help/modifying-robots-txt/
LLMs make it easier than ever to self-host a blog, because I can outsource all the annoying boilerplate to them.
Cloudflare allegedly has a feature that lets you block AI scrapers with one click. I haven't tried it though - I personally don't mind my content getting scraped.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/declaring-your-aindependence-blo...
I run a blog (err… website) for a living and writing my own static site generator was sensible. Jekyll with GitHub pages is also a sensible option if you like offline text editor-based editing.
Basically, opt for content that is under your control, even if it’s hosted on someone else’s server. Definitely host something under a domain that you fully own.
Anyway... It depends a lot on your goals. You may want to write for yourself or you may want to have a large audience. You may want to just write about this specific topic -or topics- that interests you. Or you may want to write about everything and anything.
You also need to consider your effort. Would you mind paying some money? Or do you instead want to try to make money? Do you want a turnkey solution or are you willing to tinker and customize or maybe even code some part (e.g. some CSS or a full theme)?
Depending on those answers, and maybe a couple more, there are different options you can choose.
Some examples:
- You could pay for some space, hand-code the site locally and just upload the site through FTP or rsync. An obvious improvement would be using a site generator instead of hand-coding. I currently have a site -no visitors- with Zola, but there are dozens to choose from. You'd be writing your content in, say, Markdown, and then with a command updating and uploading the site. Optionally, download a theme you like and -optionally again- customize it. Or make your own.
- Still paying for basic hosting you can go with some simple blog CMS. Probably one written in PHP, since that's what most "basic hosting" usually supports. There are a few options but I can mention Grav or Chyrp Lite. Sometimes I've used a wiki (such as Dokuwiki) with a few tweaks to produce an experience fairly close to a blog.
- You can, obviously, go for a full thing like Wordpress, Drupal, Ghost, etc. It will usually require more effort if you still want to self-host. But you can usually also find places that will host it for you and manage installation and setup. These probably won't be free.
- You can still find some free hosting, too. Neocities comes to mind, but I haven't used it and can't say anything about how well it works. I'm sure there are others. They may mean having to put up with some ads, probably, but you can still retain some control over it.
- There are also some "blogging platforms" like Blogger, Medium, Write.as, or even Wordpress. But I don't use those so I can't recommend any in particular. Be aware that they may or may not be free, or they may have some free features and some paid ones. They may also have other concerns like ads, tracking, loss of ownership, etc.
I do find that Medium brings significant traffic I couldn't get on my own. I also "publish" to a specialty Medium magazine (Level Up Coding) which brings additional eyeballs to my writing[0].