Still, the barrier to entry remains too high for my liking. I wish more smart minds were working on making publishing on the web easier instead of just working on getting people to consume.

Jeremy Keith, Our web

What I think about when I think about blogging. My main interest in indieweb at the moment comes from this angle.

Interesting case in point. Firstly, I read this post of Jeremy’s more than 20 days after it was posted because I’m behind on my RSS, and because RSS doesn’t have an algorithm that might have served it up sooner.

After reading this bit that hit me as a thing I’ve been meaning to write myself for months, I awkwardly selected and copied the text from my RSS reader on iPhone.

I then spent time remembering the name of what wordpress.com has changed its app to because Jetpack still makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Open Jetpack, tap +, paste text, back to RSS to copy link to Jeremy’s post, back to Jetpack, type Jeremy’s name and post title, awkwardly select it, scroll right on Jetpack styling options menu, select link, paste link, toggle on ‘open in new window’.

Select all text, scroll right again on styling menu options, all the way to the end to tap the three dot ‘more’ menu, tap Transform block… select Quote.

Press return. Typed this.

Next, I’ll hit publish, not to a social media account that took me 30 seconds to sign up to once, but to a website at the end of a domain that I had to register, and fiddle with DNS settings, to point to a site in an account with wordpress.com, that I set up and added credit card details to, and in which I spent hours indecisively choosing a theme, which I then spent even more hours tweaking, in order to actually publish, this.

And this is the really easy version of indieweb publishing, using a service that does the hosting a building almost entirely for you. ‘Just’ having to do a little DNS and account settings and design styling.

The walled garden internet is winning because it’s easy. And I mean properly easy. The level of easy that Jobs, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey and Systrom all knew was needed.

A level of easy that most people are STILL incapable of comprehending.

Enter a few details, fill out a tiny web form, and get going.

That’s how easy the indieweb needs to get to fight back. I’m with Jeremy in wishing smarter minds than mine were working on this.