Alternative blogging

I have a mentor who told me to start sharing my ideas more widely and publicly, because if I don’t do it, no one else is going to do it for me. And no one would know I ever had any ideas at all. That really resonated with me, so I’m here with a digital garden.

Since I’ve built this garden, I’ve started keeping a mental tab of other platforms that could do something similar. I’m calling this alternative blogging – blogging as a concept has been kind of wrung out and worn down in the last ten years, but these sites take a fresh approach.

1. Are.na

Are.na is kind of similar to Pinterest, but a lot more freeform. Instead of “pins” that contain just images or links, you can create text, nest entire other boards, and add to other people’s content to create a whole universe of interconnected ideas. Visit my are.na

2. Substack

This is closer to traditional blogging, but each post gets emailed as a newsletter to your friends. The style personally doesn’t work as well for me (I like to dump my thoughts then come clean it up weeks later), but it’s been rising in popularity. Visit Perfectly Imperfect

3. Neocities

A step back into Web 1.0 for a moment. Neocities is based off of oldschool personal sites (hence the name – Geocities, but new) but adds an optional social element. It’s a personal site that exists for no other reason than the vibes. Bonus for being a low-stakes entry into HTML/CSS. Visit Sadness

4. Multiverse

Similar to Neocities, but make it blogging (and less upfront coding). I haven’t used it, but it looks like tumblr-meets-Angelfire site. Please try it and report back. Visit Multiverse

5. Notion

Notion is mentioned every time any discussion happens about no-code digital gardens. Visit Chinarut’s digital greenhouse