💭 My approach to running a link blog
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!https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/22/link-blog/#atom-everything

Date: December 23, 2024

My approach to running a link blog
 I started running a basic link blog on this domain back in November 2003—publishing links (which I called “blogmarks”) with a title, URL, short snippet of commentary and a “via” …
 Simon Willison’s Weblog · simonwillison.net [1]

I still cannot believe I thought I had such a unique idea with thoughts only to find out shortly thereafter that Simon beat me to the punch by about 20 years!

Simon put a lot of work into this [post](https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/22/link-blog/#thoughts [2].waylonwalker.com) please check it out. Its not only filled with tons of little nuggets about blogging, it has just a ton of links to other posts I'm itching to read now.

https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/22/link-blog/#thoughts [2].waylonwalker.com

## a linkblog proves that you read

Simon mentions it in the post as well, but one thing about having a link blog does is that it proves that you actually read articles that you share. This is really more about proving to myself, and reminding myself that anyone else, it's a good feeling.

## Trying to add soemthing extra

* include names of people, and add tags for common people
* something extra - the whole point is to bring something to the post without stealing thunder, but rather linkbuilding for the author that put the hard work in.
* copious amounts of quotes
* It should bring the author up not put them down

## A post a day

_well .98 posts per day_

Simon mentions starting in Nov 2003, which puts that at 7722 days since then. That is so close to a post a day for 21 years, even though they are often as short as one sentence that is impressive to keep up over time.

> So far I’ve published 7,607 link blog posts and counting.

## What's my rate

I just check and I am at 513 days in with 413 posts (0.8 posts/day). Not quite up to Simon, but close enough to be proud of. My only grief is that I didn't start sooner.

## My stack

I have a full post explaining more about how I do mine and the stack behind it here.

https://waylonwalker.com/thoughts/

## See Images **are** hard!

This is one of the main reasons that I built [dropper](https://dropper.wayl.one) for myself, and plan to include it in [fokais](https://fokais.com) as a product to help others with their blog. This is definite evidence that I am not the only one with this issue!

## I've made images easy form myself

I've tried half a dozen or so easy techniques from obsidian to various github repos and none have really hit me with inspiration to really add screenshots like I do with [dropper](https://dropper.wayl.one). I write all of my thoughts posts in a chrome extension drop down local first style and when i hit paste it uploads and gives me a markdown image link, it cannot be easier for me.

When I store them I compress them and convert them to webp. I serve them by streaming them out of an s3 bucket with fastapi and some very generous cloudflare cache headers, so I should only get a request for that image about once a year.

> Warning, I built dropper for me, no guarantees that it works forever, foakis will be for more users.

![image](https://dropper.wayl.one/api/file/2d54112d-b6c0-4f42-bbbb-eeb5fea133bd.webp)

## Bluesky does not penalize for links

I am loving bluesky more and more, learning this just gave it another level up.

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## Series

I just noticed that Simon has Series on his blog in a very elegant way. One I need to get back to blogging more, I did not do so good in 2024, and two this is awesome and I want it.

![image](https://dropper.wayl.one/api/file/ec59349e-cca7-4fa9-a57e-50cc442305db.webp)test

!!! note

 This post is a thought [3]. It's a short note that I make
 about someone else's content online #thoughts [2]

References:
[1]: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/22/link-blog/#atom-everything
[2]: /tags/thoughts/
[3]: /thoughts/