The Solo Blogger Project - Getting People to Blog
Although I have been a frequent visitor to the DU since it started, I confess to having not posted here very much over the years. Most of my Internet activism over the years has taken place by posting in other forums that weren’t political per-say, but often had topics in their general discussion areas like “Isn’t George Bush Great” or the classic “Why does Obama Hate America”. So I spent my time taking the argument straight to conservatives where I found conservatives monopolizing the conversation. Sometimes it was well received by the management at these non-political forums, but often it was not.
Over the past couple of years I have become alarmed at the over corporatization of the Internet. I think we are in real danger of losing our voice forever on the Internet. Indeed the most popular “liberal” site was bought out a few years ago and has devolved into a non-stop side boob show that seems to care more about TMZ style celebrity gossip than left leaning politics.
What brought me to this moment was Mitt Romney’s 47% video. It wasn’t the video itself, but rather the story of how the author of the video had such a difficult and almost impossible time getting that video published even though he was sitting on the news story of the entire election. I decided I needed to do something to help make sure ordinary people would still have a voice on the Internet.
I thought long and hard about how to do that and I concluded there just weren’t many places where a regular person can be heard anymore. That was when I decided to start the Solo Blogger project which is aimed at giving regular people the technical knowledge they need to set up their own self-hosted blog. That way their voice can never be taken away from them. What I envision is a net work of small bloggers interconnected sharing each other’s material on social media and on their own blogs so their voice won’t be muted.
So I am here to offer free advice, technical assistance or whatever you need if you want to set-up your own blog. I have been publishing my own sites since 1998.
If you want you can read some of the tutorials that I have already finished:
Free Blogging Platforms vs. Self Hosted Blogs the Pros and Cons:
http://www.soloblogger.com/free-blog-or-paid-blog/
The technical nuts and bolts of setting up a self-hosted blog in easy to understand language:
http://www.soloblogger.com/make-a-blog/
How to integrate FaceBook comments into your self-hosted blog and the pros and cons of doing so:
http://www.soloblogger.com/facebook-comments-wordpress/
How to build your blog’s reputation for SEO:
http://www.soloblogger.com/why-your-blog-gets-no-google-love/
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