I have always been a blogger. Even before I actually had a blog, that is.

My first ‘blog’ was a dilapidated diary, where I’d scribble away my ramblings as a seventh grade kid. I call it a ‘blog’, since my ‘family members’ used to pry on my writings, and all my ramblings were public knowledge even before I knew it! 😉

I started my first actual ‘blog’ a few years later, as a gawky twelfth grader, on a Pentium 4 PC, with a shaky Dial Up connection. Little did I know that blogging, would shake up my life so much that it would become an overwhelming passion, and that I’d end up working with the company that is a major player in the web publishing space!

Well, fate it seems, is not without a sense of irony. 😉

Interestingly enough, as I shifted my career from writing to actually developing and supporting the software that runs blogs and websites, I found myself writing lesser than what I used to… I have nobody to blame for that, but myself, and my procrastination…

Until Automattic (my awesome employer) kindly decided to gift me the domain this blog uses – hari.blog.

Over the years, I have seen a few people in my circle proclaim widely about how they do not blog any more, and how blogs are dead (duh). I can see a lot of these people writing tweetstorms, and posting gargantuan Facebook statuses. I see a lot of new websites being born in the internet, that call themselves ‘portals’, but are actually blogs, that share a wealth of information. Not to mention, the advent of Medium – which seems to be the new cool for a lot of big names in the tech industry.

I just have one thing to tell all these people: Get a blog, folks!

A blog is your own content and your own personal space in the interwebs (especially so if you host your own content). It is not used by third party service providers to run advertisements, or to gather sensitive data about you, to serve their own priorities. Your blog will be yours, and yours alone – so will be your content. The rights of the content you share will not be stolen by third parties for their own selfish motives; better still – you become a part of the open web, and join hands with the worldwide movement to prevent the internet from being run by large corporations! You can post your thoughts without the fear of it being banned from the interwebs (provided it does not violate any laws)…

A blog is your Residual Self Image – It can help you become yourself, in the interwebs.

There are several ways to start a blog – the easiest way would be to sign up with one of the blogging service providers, like WordPress.com (an Automattic Product – this blog runs on WordPress.com). You can even get a great domain for yourself too – yes, your own .blog. There are several other service providers too, that help you set up blogs, like Google’s Blogger, or Tumblr, for instance, that you can try.

You can also set up your own blog in your own web server – by using open source WordPress, or by using other content management systems like Joomla! or Drupal. This gives you more flexibility than a blogging platform, with more features. And yes, you can even write your own blogging platform, if you are good with code. Wanna get that cool .blog domain like me for your own blog? Get yours here! https://get.blog

Still not convinced? Listen to what Matt Mullenweg (Co-Founder of WordPress, and CEO – Automattic) has to say about this!

So, I may be biased (since I work for Automattic), but having run my blogs on WordPress (both on WordPress.com, and by using open source WordPress in my own servers) for over 10 years now – and it’s been a fantastic run, yet! If you ask me for recommendations on blogging software, I would strongly recommend you to try WordPress!

And with that push to get you to start blogging, I present to you my own new blog!

My other blog – Hari Shanker R – will continue to remain my primary home in the interwebs. I’d still continue writing there – mostly on work-related stuff. This blog will focus on the ‘sunny side of life’, as enigmatic as that sounds. 😉 More on that in my next post!