David Heinemeier Hansson, writing on Signal v Noise:

Writing for us is not a business, in any direct sense of the word. We write because we have something to say, not to make money off page views, advertisements, or subscriptions. If some readers end up signing up for Basecamp, that’s great. But if they just like to read and not buy, that’s also great.

Beyond that, though, we’ve grown ever more aware of the problems with centralizing the internet. Traditional blogs might have swung out of favor, as we all discovered the benefits of social media and aggregating platforms, but we think they’re about to swing back in style, as we all discover the real costs and problems brought by such centralization.

I sure hope this is the case. Writing on the web has always been a passion of mine and although I partake in some aspects of the centralized web — like Twitter and Instagram — I sure would like to see thoughts and ideas shared through more distributed means, like weblogs.

Luckily, the barrier to entry has never been lower. You can buy WordPress-specific hosting from places like Bluehost for about $3 a month and a domain name for around $10-15 per year. There’s plenty of great, free themes available and you can start publishing in a matter of minutes.

And you can always start publishing on WordPress.com, where you can get support from Happiness Engineers like myself. We’ll help with just about any aspect of your site — from choosing the best theme to setting up widgets and using the editor. And if you eventually feel like moving to self-hosted would be a better fit, we can help you export your content and point you in the right direction to move it elsewhere.

(Via K.Q. Dreger.)