So the first question, I guess, is: what sort of platform is my new project going to live on?

I really, really like the look of my Micro.blog site , and I’d love to be writing here. I could just provide links back and forth between posts, and I guess provide a pinned table of contents page that would allow me (and any readers) to choose their own pathway through the site. I would be fighting against the traditional reverse-chronology structure of a blog. Are there ways to embed pictures or video within a post, if that came up? I haven’t tried that yet.

I could use something like Scalar, “a free, open source authoring and publishing platform that’s designed (at USC) to make it easy for authors to write long-form, born-digital scholarship online. Great for creating complex, multi-modal essays.” I mean, who wouldn’t want to create complex, multimodal essays? Scalar is available on my Reclaim hosting service, and I’ve used it before for several of my books. It allows me to create alternative paths through the material, and also automatically creates a table of contents as I go. It’s a little clunky, and isn’t the most attractive platform, but it would be free and I have experience using it.

I could also use Obsidian (or Roam for “daily auto-back-linked-wiki interconnected brain dumps…") or Notion. Obsidian actually bills itself as “The easiest way to publish your wiki, knowledge base, documentation, or digital garden.” I’ve used it before, but have never felt as if I’d mastered it. It feels sort of like WordPress, in that it is overrun with hundreds (thousands?) of plug-ins that I’m sure do all kinds of cool and useful things, but it feels like I could spend a lot of time going down those rabbit holes and YouTube tutorials. Also, if I wanted to make what I write available for others to read, I’d need to buy the Publish option, which is $8 - $10 a month. I have to say that I’ve never found Obsidian aesthetically pleasing – maybe there are plug-ins to change the skin? (This is the same issue I have with the wikis I have available through Reclaim – they all look like MediaWiki/Wikipedia, which I find kind of blurgh.)

I’ve never used Roam, but it looks very similar to Obsidian, and is $15 a month (I’m assuming this allows me to make the files public, like Obsidian Publish). Both Obsidian and Roam are more naturally digital garden-like – you’re not creating workarounds to fight the reverse-chronology blog format – but oof! they’re really ugly. Maybe you Obsidian users can tell me how to change the visuals. @amerpie ? At $100/year +/-, I’d want to make sure this project isn’t just a wild hare.

I’ve also used Notion, and I find it easier to use than Obsidian, and more attractive out of the box. But I’ve learned that having my work on somebody else’s platform is dangerous. (For instance, I’ve lost access to my Substack blog and have no idea how to get it back. I also used to write for The Clyde Fitch Report, which is no longer available on the web.)

I guess I could also use Moodle, which I used when I was teaching, and which is available on Reclaim. My memory is that it was flexible, but really made for education, and overall kind of ugly. But I haven’t used it for five years, so I have no idea what it’s like now.

Also, there’s Are.na, which is very different, and I don’t really get yet. But it makes me think of Fizzy, which is basically a very attractive Kan-Ban. I like Fizzy aesthetically, and I think it has possibilities, but I suspect it isn’t ideal for this particular project.

Everything has trade-offs, and nothing jumps out as the Obvious Choice.

So: If anyone has suggestions or comments, I’d love to hear them.