d3ft.com

Some brilliant writer person once suggested that people write the first paragraph of a blog entry last. That way, you’d have a good idea what you were writing about, so you could introduce the idea more clearly. I love the idea, and I did it with this entry. It amazes me, in how I’ve been writing somewhere on the internet for something like 20 years, that I never have stuck to one thing long enough to really see how good of a site I could make.

In September, I decided to put together a minimalist website that had the primary function of sifting through the ever–growing number of interesting things on the internet. A rather fortuitous domain name search and registration later, I created this site. The original intention was to put it here then leave it be, but that changed.

That concept, of creating something and never evolving it, was something I looked forward to. It was a challenge for me to keep something in its originally–concieved state, then grow the site through external and internal ideas, rather than functions. The idea is akin to what Twitter has done — build on their core functionality without diverging from the original intention.

Most of the innovations Twitter the company has made in the past couple of years are from ways to work around limitations on the system from Twitter users. Search, lists, hashtags, and ‘re–tweeting’ are all ideas from the users that the company has wisely added to its core functionality. That way — organically — is the way I think you grow a product most successfully.

Its that way that I chose to grow this site. Organically. Built on a WordPress core, I’ve added a few touches here and there, but there’s nothing here that anybody can’t do. Just some plugins, a minimalist template, and my own ramblings, written in micro– to short–outbursts of sagacity.

A couple of months have shown me that writing alone doesn’t work any more. The internet is full of terrible writers, linkers, lurkers, and trolls. Nobody gets enough traffic that deserve it, and nobody that gets traffic deserves it. This is less of a personal quibble and more of an acknowledgment that people tend to be attracted to the grotesque rather than the tranquil.

There are no drastic changes planned for the future of this site. Just a few additions, here and there. Just a continuation of growing this thing — whatever a d3ft.com is. As I get more settled writing this thing — gain my sea legs, if you will — then I’ll keep on trying to make this the best d3ft.com it can be.