I’ve been a huge fan of personal websites as an alternative to social networks for years and I think there’s never been a better time to jump in. It doesn’t mean you have to abandon social networks entirely, but I think the world would be a much better place if we all occasionally took the time to fully form our ideas and write them out in a longer format before sharing.

There is a bit of a barrier to entry, especially when you start buying domains, configuring DNS, and installing weblog software. But services like WordPress.com makes things quite a bit easier. And since WordPress.com is built on WordPress, you’ll always have the option to export your content and move to self-hosted if you decide that it’s a better fit for you down the line.

Full disclosure: I work for Automattic, providing support to users of WordPress.com. But I would have recommended it regardless. I’ve used WordPress for nearly twelve years now and WordPress.com is the easiest way to get a site up and running on the platform.