The Great Blaugust Comment Debate
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
Let’s see if I can marshall my thoughts on this matter into some semblance of coherency. First off, what is blogging? Google defines it as “the act of creating and publishing content on the internet, typically in the form of articles or posts, on a website or platform known as a blog”. Straightaway, that definition does not state that comments are in any way a mandatory part of blogging. However, posting an article online places it in a public and shared space. The internet is not a void. Quite the contrary. Hence, you may not have or want comments on your blog but by publishing a post that is open to all, you’ve stuck your head above the parapet. Thus you may attract comments, by hook or by crook. Other bloggers can link to your post and write their own reply. Similarly they can reach you via social media if you have allowed it. It is also worth noting that private email comments can be made public.
So there is an inherent social aspect to blogging, whether the blogger expressly desires it or not. If you’re truly blogging just for yourself, there is the option to make your blog private. However, few bloggers do this because most do have a desire on some level for their writing to be read. Therefore it is my opinion that this tangential move to have comments via email or say Mastodon, is a way for the blogger to have greater agency over the process. Because allowing comments on your blog can have negative consequences. There is scope for spam, abusive comments or for your writing to be derided. Not everyone copes with such things well. Plus, all of this can happen in a very public way. That in itself can be a negative factor for some bloggers. I believe that an element of this shift to having comments conducted offsite and possibly privately, stems from a desire to conduct such activities from a safe space.
I like feedback, constructive criticism and exchanging ideas. So I am happy to have comments on Contains Moderate Peril. I apply my own notions of etiquette and manners to comments that have been left and I have no qualms in deleting those that are insulting and unconstructive. I tend not to lay awake at night ruminating on negative feedback left by a few individuals. However, I appreciate that not everyone is wired the same way as me and some folk find these potential aspects of reader comments troubling. Hence, everyone makes a choice that they are comfortable with. If this newer approach works for the blogger in question then so be it. It has also been brought to my attention that comments have never been a cultural expectation with blogs on some subjects. Perhaps my social expectations regarding comments, comes from my gaming background.
I have always felt that my writing is to a degree, a prelude to a discussion. When writing a post, I sometimes won’t cover all available talking points, thus leaving scope for these to be explored in the comments. But again, not everyone holds such a view. I do feel that being confronted with opposite views to your own and then responding to them can be a useful experience. I’d even argue that deleting abusive comments can also teach a valuable lesson. However, the toxic nature of the internet means that some people may not want to countenance such things. Keeping bullshit at arms length is wise, especially if you write in a field that attracts hostility. Being constantly abused is exhausting. However, digging a virtual moat and pulling up the drawbridge has its own consequences.
The fact that I’ve managed to write as much as I have on this subject shows the scope of the discussion surrounding it. Your approach to blog comments is ultimately entirely up to you and you should make your choice accordingly. If you have a static site and integrating comments requires incurring a further cost, then that in itself is a good reason not to have them, if you’re working within a budget. The most important factor is to be content with your decision. I shall make one final point regarding blog comments. Not having them on your blog doesn’t stop people commenting on your writing. They will just discuss your material elsewhere, which is something you have far less say in. The reality is that if you blog publicly, then you cannot truly avoid criticism. Perhaps that should be the first lesson of blogging.
I have been writing online for nearly two decades. I don’t claim to be good or accomplished but what I can say with certainty is that the more often you write, the easier it becomes. For those who are new to writing a blog and the Blaugust Festival of Blogging, possibly the biggest hurdle that you now have to get over, is writing your first post of the month. You spent the lead up to this event sorting out your blog templates, fine tuning the backend and possibly banking some ideas. Or you may have decided to just wing it and make it all up as you go along. Both are perfectly valid approaches. However, there is one thing left to do that cannot be put off, avoided or danced around. Writing. At some point you’ve got to do it. Or bail on the event. The proverbial “shit or get off the pot”.
If you take a cursory look at a calendar you will see that the month of July is fast coming to an end. That means that Blaugust 2026 Festival of Blogging starts in a few days time! If you’re participating, or thinking of doing so, the next few days present a golden opportunity to do some practical organising and basic preparation. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Feel free to just do things as they come, so to speak, if that’s your approach. However, for most of us, it helps if we have some kind of plan in place and make some arrangements in advance. I personally prefer this approach and like to have some ideas for blog posts in the bank. It is also useful to have “options” if something doesn’t go to plan. For those who are new to Blaugust, here are a few ideas regarding preparation that may be of use to you. As ever, your personal mileage may vary and ultimately you are best off adopting a strategy that suits your writing style and personal schedule.
Prior to last year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging, I upgraded Contains Moderate Peril to the latest version of Squarespace. There are still some aspects of the site that need fine tuning but overall, I am happy with the appearance of my blog and its respective functionality. With this year’s writing event fast approach, I decided to tackle over the last few days, some of those finer points that need tweaking. I have wanted a post counter on the site for a long time but unfortunately there is no native Squarespace widget for this basic function. I also felt the need to upgrade the blogroll, as the current one didn’t support RSS feeds from certain sites (e.g. Google Blogger) and was dependent upon a third party service, Elfsight, which wasn’t ideal. Both of these issues have now been addressed and I am pleased with the results. There is now a post counter on the Blog Archive page, which seems a logical place to have it and the Blogroll is now far more comprehensive.
Next month the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging begins. Roundabout this time each year, I try to write a promotional post to raise awareness of the event and encourage potential participants. However, as I’ve done this quite a few times before, each year it is becomes increasingly difficult to present the essential facts about Blaugust: Festival of Blogging in an interesting fashion. There’s nothing worse than writing a post and feeling that you’re just covering old ground. So, this year, I thought I’d try something different and present the most important information about this annual event, as if it were a conversation between myself and an interested passer by. Feel free to attribute novelty voices for each party in your own head, while you read this. If it helps, try imagining that this discussion is happening between two celebrities or such like. Both may be wearing exotic hats but I digress. On with the scenario.
I read a blog post by Void recently, about finding a new internet home. He wrote about how he and many others have had to pick up their “digital roots” and migrate multiple times over the years, from one platform to another. It is a position I can sympathise with as I have done likewise. Hence I like the idea of having a place online where I hangout by default. My own blog is an anchor for me but it is not quite the same thing as a platform or online portal where I can find all my friends and colleagues, share content and shoot the breeze. It’s a curious thing, because as I typed that last sentence it struck how such a sentiment may seem alien to others. There may well be people who like to have a finger in multiple pies and who are happy to frequent and flit between various social media apps, Discord servers and subreddits. I prefer to focus my efforts on a single instance. A place that suits my requirements, allows me to put down roots and become part of the furniture. Like a virtual Diogenes Club.
Everyday, once I’m up, I sit at my desk in my office, fire up my PC and log into Feedly. I have various RSS feeds grouped by category, which I slowly trawl through and read anything that catches my eye. I have one curated feed named “Blaugust” named after the yearly festival of blogging event. It has over 250 blogs listed, many of which are former participants. Most of these regularly post. Hence there’s a lot to get through and so I don’t read all of them. However there are a few that I always checkout. Mainly because they’re the personal musings of some of our writing community’s oldest and most prodigious members. The sorts of guys and gals who are part of the furniture. They’ve always been there and it feels like they always will. Posting their thoughts, sharing their enthusiasm and spreading the love, so to speak. One of these blogs, is Tales of the Aggronaut. written by Belghast.
For the last few months I have being using Google Gemini. I subscribed so I could access a wider spectrum of services and evaluate it effectively. I also wanted to dispel some of the hysteria that accompanies any conversation about Large Language Models and Artificial Intelligence. The results were initially interesting and Google Gemini proved useful when researching material for blog posts. It is good at providing summaries about well documented subjects. I wrote a post about food banks recently and it distilled a lot of data into a manageable amount, which was ideal for my article. Google Gemini has also produced some visual basic scripting and simple batch files that have allowed me to automate processes on my PC. Such as changing the default monitor, or screen resolution at the click of an icon. However, I found this AI struggled with in-depth software troubleshooting and that its ability to create images varies greatly depending on the subject.
On Friday 26th June, I had another random spike in internet traffic to Contains Moderate Peril. The statistical package that comes with my Squarespace account recorded over 13k visits in less than 24 hours, which is not typical (although I wish it was). However, all of these visits to my blog arrived via the default homepage and spent between 1 and 2 minutes there. Hence, it was obvious that this was not human traffic, as there was no evidence of any searches being made of content that is available on my site, nor of the “visitors” clicking on any of the links on the top menu and viewing other posts. This was undoubtedly AI traffic arriving at the designated homepage and simply parsing the site. I had a similar spate of this sort of web traffic last November. The only difference on that occasion is that the traffic all came from China. This time round it hailed from the US. I suspect that this is something that will happen more often as companies set their AI loose on the net for what is effectively training.
I recently watched a video on Patreon by someone who I actively support as a “content creator” and whose work I enjoy. I shall provide no more detail regarding their identity because they may not want their work referenced with regard to what I am going to say. During the course of their video they briefly referenced the work put into promoting a podcast they are currently producing and the relatively low audience that it has garnered so far. The comments were an aside and most certainly not said with any sense of self-pity. They were simply a statement of fact. Furthermore, I suspect they are far from unique and similar sentiments have been expressed in one way or another by anyone who has created something the published it online, only for it to be lost among the greater white noise” of the wider internet.
When I first started blogging way back in 2007, I maintained a blogroll of all my colleagues and peers’ websites. At the time this was a common practice and a way to support an expanding community. I considered this such an important aspect of the blogging scene at the time, I created a website to aggregate posts from video game blogs, called The Gaming Blog Nexus. It ran for two years and proved quite useful. However, it was tricky to administer and would frequently break as a lot of the back end widgets and plugins were created and maintained by “gifted amateurs”. I eventually shut it down due to the operating costs. When I moved my own website, Contains Moderate Peril, to Squarespace in 2015 I intended to start maintaining a blogroll once again. However, at that time there was no native support for such a thing on the platform. Hence for the last ten years, I have not had a blogroll on my website, which hasn’t sat well with me.
I was speaking to someone recently about hobbies (fortunately it wasn’t Simon Quinlank) and I mentioned that I have maintained a blog for over a 19 years. When I talked about the ongoing cost they were most surprised, as they had assumed that blogging was something that could be done for free. I guess we’ve become so accustomed to the provision of free online services such as email, that this a reasonable assumption. I pointed out that although it is indeed possible to blog for free using Blogger, it was not the optimal approach, especially if you want to maintain some degree of control over your writing. Naturally, the next question they asked was how much do I spend and I gave them a ballpark figure. All of which reminded me that I wrote a post on this very subject a few years ago. So I’ve decided to revisit the subject and see how much it currently costs to maintain Contains Moderate Peril.
Today I started the slow process of auditing every post that has been published on Contains Moderate Peril since 1st August 2016. The goal is to correct any obvious typos and replace all existing images with larger ones. The Squarespace software upgrade I applied to the website at the end of last year has finally allowed me to establish a standard format that I am happy with. Hence the ongoing audit is the perfect opportunity to apply these style rules to all posts. There are also some technical issues and matters regarding functionality that need to be addressed. I need to determine how to embed YouTube videos in such a way that they automatically scale to fit whatever device is viewing them. Another area which needs improving is the website search facility. This needs refinement so that enquiries can be more specific. Older posts also need to be more accessible, although I am still researching how best to achieve this.
It’s nearly two and half months since the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event ended. During that time I’ve maintained a fairly regular writing schedule and I post every two days or so. Furthermore, I finally dragged my blog template, kicking and screaming, into the modern era. I tweaked a few pages and updated the content of the “about” page. The next task is to start going through all previous posts and replacing older, low resolution images with larger, more appropriate ones. This process also presents an opportunity to ensure that all posts follow a uniform style. IE Are appropriately categorised, have links to related posts at the bottom and are SEO optimised. This will be a lengthy task so I think the best approach will be to tackle two or three posts a day. Hopefully this will raise the profile of older content, which generates the lion’s hare of traffic to this site.
I use a browser extension called Control Panel for YouTube, which allows me to determine who many videos are displayed on my YouTube homepage and to filter the content that is shown. At present it is configured to display rows of six. Something that I have noticed of late, is the amount of videos with hyperbolic titles and thumbnail images created by AI. Both of which are design choices made to increase engagement. Clickbait titles are contrived to meet current SEO optimisation criteria and as such feature more and more in search results. The fact that they frequently have no relation to the subject I am researching, seems to be neither here nor there. The same issues arise with regard to AI generated images, which again frequently have no bearing on the matter. The fact that more and more content creators do this, infers that it works and is now an essential part of the process you must follow to be seen and featured in search results.
In the last post in this series, I specified the need for a plan with regard to upgrading my blog. Well a plan has emerged, been refined and has now been formally adopted. Rather than migrate Contains Moderate Peril to a new platform and effectively have to rebuild all the content, I am going to upgrade my existing presence on Squarespace. This decision was made for two reasons. Time and money. Migrating to a new platform will take a lot of time and incur additional costs. Upgrading the existing website will take less time and has no cost implications. That is not to say that it will be easy. It has become abundantly clear that the upgrade process will break stuff and that all published posts will have to be manually repaired. Hence my choice boils down to the lesser of two evils.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has reached an end and it would appear that this event has been well received by those who have participated in it. I believe that there were 168 bloggers taking part this year, many of whom have not participated before. Some were new to blogging, where others simply wished to see if they could increase their writing output. As ever there was a wide variety of blog styles and subject matters and it has been most interesting to read new posts every day. I have attempted to leave comments and positive feedback where I can and I hope that some of these new blogs that I’ve discovered continue to write. Well done to everyone who took part. I hope it has been an enjoyable and informative process and that you have learned from it. I know that at least one blogger has determined that writing online is not for them, which is a valuable lesson.
There is currently a group writing prompt available as part of this year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging which has piqued my interest. It asks the question “what is the oldest draft post you have” and suggests that it is revived in some manner. I have dozens of draft posts in a folder in my Google Drive. Many are film reviews or film related. The oldest of which dates back to summer 2010. Rather than write a straight forward review of Blake Edwards 1968 comedy The Party, I rather foolishly thought at the time that I’d tackle the issue of whether the film is sufficiently racist to make it beyond the pale. Let it suffice to say that I quickly found myself bogged down in the complexities of the subject and thus never completed the blog post.
I’ve participated in every previous Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event. Prior to that I was involved in the Newbie Blogger Initiative or NBI as it was affectionately known. I have therefore written quite a lot of blogging advice and suggestions over the years. If anyone feels disposed to do so, you can access them all by clicking on the “blogging” option on the top menu of this blog. However, it is important to remember that a lot of the ideas I have advocated and written about over the years are purely subjective. Not all advice or guidance works for everyone. People have different ideas about blogging, different approaches to it and different aspirations. This year has highlighted some quite distinct differences among bloggers which has been most illuminating.
Today is my blogging anniversary. I have been writing online consistently for 18 years. My earliest blogs no longer exist, although they can be found via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. My first blog was a Lord of the Rings Online fansite called Misadventures in LOTRO. After a while this morphed into a wider gaming website; Misadventures in Gaming. However, I soon discovered that I wanted to write about more than just video games, so I decided to start from scratch and created Contains Moderate Peril in February 2010. This blog endured and has been my main online presence ever since. It has moved several times for various reasons. For a while I had a sponsor, as well as a reasonably sized audience and had dreams of making money from my writing and podcast. But it wasn’t to be and now I just write primarily for my own peace of mind and amusement.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
I used WordPress as a website platform for 5 years. One of the things I used to like about it was the ability to track data and generate stats. However, I moved Contains Moderate Peril to Squarespace in 2015 for technical and financial reasons. I’ve been broadly happy with the results but there are a few niggles. Squarespace has a solid analytical package available which provides an adequate summary of website traffic. I can also determine what keywords have been used for searching the site and what posts are popular. However, basic information such as how many blog posts I’ve made over the last 9 years is conspicuously absent. I also have no obvious way of finding out what the average length of a blog post is or what the estimated reading time is.
When you initially start blogging, your aspirations tend to be very straightforward. Choose a title, find a niche and get into the habit of writing. Simple tasks that can still take a while to master. Once your blog is established and has endured for a while, you may not have any further long term goals other than to just keep going. However, if you feel that you want to achieve more then you have to tackle a new set of problems. There is a great deal of “advice” in the public domain about growing and monetising your blog. A lot of it is questionable but there are some approaches that do work. However, these require you to write to a specific process, chasing the ever changing whims of your potential readership. You have to compromise. And for many bloggers, that is the deal breaker.
Blog Comments
Leaving comments on a post is a perennial talking point among bloggers. A good comment is often encouraging, provides valuable feedback and is also personally rewarding. However, allowing them on your site is also an invitation for assholes to talk bollocks. Setting aside the overall debate, comments per se just seem to be in decline these days. I find that people will respond to a post on Twitter, where they saw the initial link to begin with. Although this is pleasant it doesn’t leave anything permanent associated with the post. But such is the nature of social media. And of course another major stumbling block to leaving comments are the foibles of the various websites and platforms themselves. All too often a site will just ignore or reject your comment. This itself then acts as a future disincentive.
Leaving comments on a post is a perennial talking point among bloggers. A good comment is often encouraging, provides valuable feedback and is also personally rewarding. However, allowing them on your site is also an invitation for assholes to talk bollocks. Setting aside the overall debate, comments per se just seem to be in decline these days. I find that people will respond to a post on Twitter, where they saw the initial link to begin with. Although this is pleasant it doesn’t leave anything permanent associated with the post. But such is the nature of social media. And of course another major stumbling block to leaving comments are the foibles of the various websites and platforms themselves. All too often a site will just ignore or reject your comment. This itself then acts as a future disincentive.
As it’s the New Year, I decided that as I read my Feedly RSS feed each morning, it would be “chummy” to leave comments and to try and reinforce that sense of community that only seems to come to the fore during writing events. Hence this morning, I left a few positive words on one website and everything worked just fine. I believe I logged in using my Twitter credentials. However, when I tried to do the same thing again on another blog, I couldn’t login and post anything. The process ground to a halt during the validation stage and after about two minutes, I got bored and moved on. It’s not the author of the blog’s fault. This just seems to be a random issue associated with some platforms. Even if you opt for a different method of logging in, such as Google or Facebook, the problem can often persist. And then if you wait for 24 hours it will work fine the next day.
This also happens on my Blog. As a host, Squarespace provide some useful functionality but this really isn’t the case with comments and “likes”. I will sometimes notice that a post has been “liked” several times but have absolutely no idea by whom. Which kind of makes the process somewhat redundant. Some folk have found leaving comments “problematic”, although I can never determine whether there’s a common factor to this. Thus, this is the current status quo. I am trying to leave more comments, something I’m usually really bad at doing but the circumstances are conspiring against me. I could leave a similar comment on the Blaugust Discord server, assuming that the author is active on that server and will see it. Not the best solution but the best I can come up with at the moment. Certainly want to maintain the positive feedback ethic, as I feel it’s needed at present.
Today’s post is part of the Blaugust 2026 Group project, which features a series of writing prompts set for specific dates throughout the month. The idea being that everyone who wishes to participate can write about the same subject, riff off each other’s posts and enjoy a shared experience. In many respect having a common writing prompt levels the playing field and provides a sense of common purpose among those who take part. Today’s group project prompt asks the question “tell us all about your very first blog”. An unambiguous and interesting question that will hopefully prove enjoyable to write about and informative to others.
I have been writing online for nearly two decades. I don’t claim to be good or accomplished but what I can say with certainty is that the more often you write, the easier it becomes. For those who are new to writing a blog and the Blaugust Festival of Blogging, possibly the biggest hurdle that you now have to get over, is writing your first post of the month. You spent the lead up to this event sorting out your blog templates, fine tuning the backend and possibly banking some ideas. Or you may have decided to just wing it and make it all up as you go along. Both are perfectly valid approaches. However, there is one thing left to do that cannot be put off, avoided or danced around. Writing. At some point you’ve got to do it. Or bail on the event. The proverbial “shit or get off the pot”.
If you take a cursory look at a calendar you will see that the month of July is fast coming to an end. That means that Blaugust 2026 Festival of Blogging starts in a few days time! If you’re participating, or thinking of doing so, the next few days present a golden opportunity to do some practical organising and basic preparation. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Feel free to just do things as they come, so to speak, if that’s your approach. However, for most of us, it helps if we have some kind of plan in place and make some arrangements in advance. I personally prefer this approach and like to have some ideas for blog posts in the bank. It is also useful to have “options” if something doesn’t go to plan. For those who are new to Blaugust, here are a few ideas regarding preparation that may be of use to you. As ever, your personal mileage may vary and ultimately you are best off adopting a strategy that suits your writing style and personal schedule.
Prior to last year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging, I upgraded Contains Moderate Peril to the latest version of Squarespace. There are still some aspects of the site that need fine tuning but overall, I am happy with the appearance of my blog and its respective functionality. With this year’s writing event fast approach, I decided to tackle over the last few days, some of those finer points that need tweaking. I have wanted a post counter on the site for a long time but unfortunately there is no native Squarespace widget for this basic function. I also felt the need to upgrade the blogroll, as the current one didn’t support RSS feeds from certain sites (e.g. Google Blogger) and was dependent upon a third party service, Elfsight, which wasn’t ideal. Both of these issues have now been addressed and I am pleased with the results. There is now a post counter on the Blog Archive page, which seems a logical place to have it and the Blogroll is now far more comprehensive.
Next month the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging begins. Roundabout this time each year, I try to write a promotional post to raise awareness of the event and encourage potential participants. However, as I’ve done this quite a few times before, each year it is becomes increasingly difficult to present the essential facts about Blaugust: Festival of Blogging in an interesting fashion. There’s nothing worse than writing a post and feeling that you’re just covering old ground. So, this year, I thought I’d try something different and present the most important information about this annual event, as if it were a conversation between myself and an interested passer by. Feel free to attribute novelty voices for each party in your own head, while you read this. If it helps, try imagining that this discussion is happening between two celebrities or such like. Both may be wearing exotic hats but I digress. On with the scenario.
I read a blog post by Void recently, about finding a new internet home. He wrote about how he and many others have had to pick up their “digital roots” and migrate multiple times over the years, from one platform to another. It is a position I can sympathise with as I have done likewise. Hence I like the idea of having a place online where I hangout by default. My own blog is an anchor for me but it is not quite the same thing as a platform or online portal where I can find all my friends and colleagues, share content and shoot the breeze. It’s a curious thing, because as I typed that last sentence it struck how such a sentiment may seem alien to others. There may well be people who like to have a finger in multiple pies and who are happy to frequent and flit between various social media apps, Discord servers and subreddits. I prefer to focus my efforts on a single instance. A place that suits my requirements, allows me to put down roots and become part of the furniture. Like a virtual Diogenes Club.
Everyday, once I’m up, I sit at my desk in my office, fire up my PC and log into Feedly. I have various RSS feeds grouped by category, which I slowly trawl through and read anything that catches my eye. I have one curated feed named “Blaugust” named after the yearly festival of blogging event. It has over 250 blogs listed, many of which are former participants. Most of these regularly post. Hence there’s a lot to get through and so I don’t read all of them. However there are a few that I always checkout. Mainly because they’re the personal musings of some of our writing community’s oldest and most prodigious members. The sorts of guys and gals who are part of the furniture. They’ve always been there and it feels like they always will. Posting their thoughts, sharing their enthusiasm and spreading the love, so to speak. One of these blogs, is Tales of the Aggronaut. written by Belghast.
For the last few months I have being using Google Gemini. I subscribed so I could access a wider spectrum of services and evaluate it effectively. I also wanted to dispel some of the hysteria that accompanies any conversation about Large Language Models and Artificial Intelligence. The results were initially interesting and Google Gemini proved useful when researching material for blog posts. It is good at providing summaries about well documented subjects. I wrote a post about food banks recently and it distilled a lot of data into a manageable amount, which was ideal for my article. Google Gemini has also produced some visual basic scripting and simple batch files that have allowed me to automate processes on my PC. Such as changing the default monitor, or screen resolution at the click of an icon. However, I found this AI struggled with in-depth software troubleshooting and that its ability to create images varies greatly depending on the subject.
On Friday 26th June, I had another random spike in internet traffic to Contains Moderate Peril. The statistical package that comes with my Squarespace account recorded over 13k visits in less than 24 hours, which is not typical (although I wish it was). However, all of these visits to my blog arrived via the default homepage and spent between 1 and 2 minutes there. Hence, it was obvious that this was not human traffic, as there was no evidence of any searches being made of content that is available on my site, nor of the “visitors” clicking on any of the links on the top menu and viewing other posts. This was undoubtedly AI traffic arriving at the designated homepage and simply parsing the site. I had a similar spate of this sort of web traffic last November. The only difference on that occasion is that the traffic all came from China. This time round it hailed from the US. I suspect that this is something that will happen more often as companies set their AI loose on the net for what is effectively training.
I recently watched a video on Patreon by someone who I actively support as a “content creator” and whose work I enjoy. I shall provide no more detail regarding their identity because they may not want their work referenced with regard to what I am going to say. During the course of their video they briefly referenced the work put into promoting a podcast they are currently producing and the relatively low audience that it has garnered so far. The comments were an aside and most certainly not said with any sense of self-pity. They were simply a statement of fact. Furthermore, I suspect they are far from unique and similar sentiments have been expressed in one way or another by anyone who has created something the published it online, only for it to be lost among the greater white noise” of the wider internet.
When I first started blogging way back in 2007, I maintained a blogroll of all my colleagues and peers’ websites. At the time this was a common practice and a way to support an expanding community. I considered this such an important aspect of the blogging scene at the time, I created a website to aggregate posts from video game blogs, called The Gaming Blog Nexus. It ran for two years and proved quite useful. However, it was tricky to administer and would frequently break as a lot of the back end widgets and plugins were created and maintained by “gifted amateurs”. I eventually shut it down due to the operating costs. When I moved my own website, Contains Moderate Peril, to Squarespace in 2015 I intended to start maintaining a blogroll once again. However, at that time there was no native support for such a thing on the platform. Hence for the last ten years, I have not had a blogroll on my website, which hasn’t sat well with me.
I was speaking to someone recently about hobbies (fortunately it wasn’t Simon Quinlank) and I mentioned that I have maintained a blog for over a 19 years. When I talked about the ongoing cost they were most surprised, as they had assumed that blogging was something that could be done for free. I guess we’ve become so accustomed to the provision of free online services such as email, that this a reasonable assumption. I pointed out that although it is indeed possible to blog for free using Blogger, it was not the optimal approach, especially if you want to maintain some degree of control over your writing. Naturally, the next question they asked was how much do I spend and I gave them a ballpark figure. All of which reminded me that I wrote a post on this very subject a few years ago. So I’ve decided to revisit the subject and see how much it currently costs to maintain Contains Moderate Peril.
Today I started the slow process of auditing every post that has been published on Contains Moderate Peril since 1st August 2016. The goal is to correct any obvious typos and replace all existing images with larger ones. The Squarespace software upgrade I applied to the website at the end of last year has finally allowed me to establish a standard format that I am happy with. Hence the ongoing audit is the perfect opportunity to apply these style rules to all posts. There are also some technical issues and matters regarding functionality that need to be addressed. I need to determine how to embed YouTube videos in such a way that they automatically scale to fit whatever device is viewing them. Another area which needs improving is the website search facility. This needs refinement so that enquiries can be more specific. Older posts also need to be more accessible, although I am still researching how best to achieve this.
It’s nearly two and half months since the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event ended. During that time I’ve maintained a fairly regular writing schedule and I post every two days or so. Furthermore, I finally dragged my blog template, kicking and screaming, into the modern era. I tweaked a few pages and updated the content of the “about” page. The next task is to start going through all previous posts and replacing older, low resolution images with larger, more appropriate ones. This process also presents an opportunity to ensure that all posts follow a uniform style. IE Are appropriately categorised, have links to related posts at the bottom and are SEO optimised. This will be a lengthy task so I think the best approach will be to tackle two or three posts a day. Hopefully this will raise the profile of older content, which generates the lion’s hare of traffic to this site.
I use a browser extension called Control Panel for YouTube, which allows me to determine who many videos are displayed on my YouTube homepage and to filter the content that is shown. At present it is configured to display rows of six. Something that I have noticed of late, is the amount of videos with hyperbolic titles and thumbnail images created by AI. Both of which are design choices made to increase engagement. Clickbait titles are contrived to meet current SEO optimisation criteria and as such feature more and more in search results. The fact that they frequently have no relation to the subject I am researching, seems to be neither here nor there. The same issues arise with regard to AI generated images, which again frequently have no bearing on the matter. The fact that more and more content creators do this, infers that it works and is now an essential part of the process you must follow to be seen and featured in search results.
In the last post in this series, I specified the need for a plan with regard to upgrading my blog. Well a plan has emerged, been refined and has now been formally adopted. Rather than migrate Contains Moderate Peril to a new platform and effectively have to rebuild all the content, I am going to upgrade my existing presence on Squarespace. This decision was made for two reasons. Time and money. Migrating to a new platform will take a lot of time and incur additional costs. Upgrading the existing website will take less time and has no cost implications. That is not to say that it will be easy. It has become abundantly clear that the upgrade process will break stuff and that all published posts will have to be manually repaired. Hence my choice boils down to the lesser of two evils.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has reached an end and it would appear that this event has been well received by those who have participated in it. I believe that there were 168 bloggers taking part this year, many of whom have not participated before. Some were new to blogging, where others simply wished to see if they could increase their writing output. As ever there was a wide variety of blog styles and subject matters and it has been most interesting to read new posts every day. I have attempted to leave comments and positive feedback where I can and I hope that some of these new blogs that I’ve discovered continue to write. Well done to everyone who took part. I hope it has been an enjoyable and informative process and that you have learned from it. I know that at least one blogger has determined that writing online is not for them, which is a valuable lesson.
There is currently a group writing prompt available as part of this year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging which has piqued my interest. It asks the question “what is the oldest draft post you have” and suggests that it is revived in some manner. I have dozens of draft posts in a folder in my Google Drive. Many are film reviews or film related. The oldest of which dates back to summer 2010. Rather than write a straight forward review of Blake Edwards 1968 comedy The Party, I rather foolishly thought at the time that I’d tackle the issue of whether the film is sufficiently racist to make it beyond the pale. Let it suffice to say that I quickly found myself bogged down in the complexities of the subject and thus never completed the blog post.
I’ve participated in every previous Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event. Prior to that I was involved in the Newbie Blogger Initiative or NBI as it was affectionately known. I have therefore written quite a lot of blogging advice and suggestions over the years. If anyone feels disposed to do so, you can access them all by clicking on the “blogging” option on the top menu of this blog. However, it is important to remember that a lot of the ideas I have advocated and written about over the years are purely subjective. Not all advice or guidance works for everyone. People have different ideas about blogging, different approaches to it and different aspirations. This year has highlighted some quite distinct differences among bloggers which has been most illuminating.
Today is my blogging anniversary. I have been writing online consistently for 18 years. My earliest blogs no longer exist, although they can be found via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. My first blog was a Lord of the Rings Online fansite called Misadventures in LOTRO. After a while this morphed into a wider gaming website; Misadventures in Gaming. However, I soon discovered that I wanted to write about more than just video games, so I decided to start from scratch and created Contains Moderate Peril in February 2010. This blog endured and has been my main online presence ever since. It has moved several times for various reasons. For a while I had a sponsor, as well as a reasonably sized audience and had dreams of making money from my writing and podcast. But it wasn’t to be and now I just write primarily for my own peace of mind and amusement.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
Newbie Blogger Initiative 2016 - Should You Allow Comments on Your Blog?
Comments have been an integral part of blogging since it became a popular activity in the late nineties. If you have a self-hosted blog or use one of the many free services, then by default the ability to leave comments is often enabled. Whether you want this option is another matter altogether and one that poses a potential headache for all bloggers. Allowing comments on your site has both pros and cons and as ever it comes down to you as a blogger to make a decision that you are comfortable with. If you are currently pondering this issue, then here are a few things to consider.
Comments have been an integral part of blogging since it became a popular activity in the late nineties. If you have a self-hosted blog or use one of the many free services, then by default the ability to leave comments is often enabled. Whether you want this option is another matter altogether and one that poses a potential headache for all bloggers. Allowing comments on your site has both pros and cons and as ever it comes down to you as a blogger to make a decision that you are comfortable with. If you are currently pondering this issue, then here are a few things to consider.
Reader feedback:
Bloggers do not thrive in a vacuum and crave feedback. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Monitoring your website traffic and statistical data can be of use but comments offer the promise of tangible feedback. Comments can potentially shed light upon whether your writing is being well received or not. Plus everyone likes to have their ego stroked to a varying degree. However the reality can be potentially quite different. Several years ago I posted an article that over a period of a month got read 35,000 times. Yet despite the relatively high level of traffic, it only garnered four comments. Feel free to work that out as a percentage. Plus you often find that a lot of the comments you receive on your site, may not be the kind that you want. I'm not talking about trolling but well-intentioned but ultimately meaningless platitudes. For example a simple "awesome", although complimentary offers no real value or insight.
Starting a dialogue with your readers:
A lot of gaming blogs are centred on discussing ideas and sharing common experiences. Posting an article based around a single question is a great way to start a debate going and attract comments. It presents an opportunity to see alternative points of view, to learn and even make new friends. If you write about MMOs for example, the comments system can act as an extension of the in-game chat. I can think of several well-known fan sites that over a period of time have become the de facto source of information for the games the support. They often play a pivotal role in their particular community. So if you have aspirations to achieve something similar or simply want to have some semblance of a dialogue with your readers then comments are essential.
"Your hide would make a fine Poncho..."
Stating, not debating:
You can write a perfectly effective blog without openly engaging in discussion. Your blog may be a source of data or provide "how to" guides. Or you may want to write a blog where you write an editorial as you see in the newspapers, where you simply state your point of view. Both these approaches don’t necessarily need reader comments and as a writer you may not consider everything you type as being open to or worthy of debate (although there are plenty of people out there who will happily do so). If that is the case, then comments are not essential and your readers will return because they enjoy the benefits of your guides or identify with your persona and particular outlook.
Sticking your head above the parapet:
The moment you write your own thoughts and put them in the public domain, then you are inviting criticism. Some folk just delight in leaving the most poisonous comments for no good reason. Let us not bother cataloguing every sort of comment than may occur. Let it suffice to say that there is plenty of scope for unpleasantness. Plus there is the separate issue of automated spam comments that can plague a website. If you decide to allow comments on your blog then you need to have thick skin. That's actually a lot harder than what you think. Every now and then there'll be one negative comment that really gets under your skin. Remember that you are dealing with gamers and they are not known as being the embodiment of reason or decorum. Also ensure you have some sort of anti-spam plugin that automatically detects bogus comments and deletes them.
Work, work, work:
If you find yourself in the fortunate position of running a blog with a healthy readership, then you may on occasions write a post that provokes a substantial amount of comments. If they are good, then it is wise to respond to them and engage with your readership. If they are bad then you may wish to crush such stupidity with a witty reposte or simply delete them. If you have elected to moderate all comments then you'll have to trawl through them one by one and see if they are suitable. All of these processes require a degree of work and time. As any blogger will tell you, the latter is a finite commodity. Choose wisely.
The esoteric art of generating more comments:
If you do elect to enable comments then you may wish to specifically write material to solicit them. This is fine if done in a sensible and measured fashion. However, like the pursuit of web traffic, this can easily descend into an unhealthy compulsion. The post that tackles a difficult issue and poses a question can be a good thing. The post that just aims to shock, offend or troll for no reason are of no real value. Plus writing like that just paints you into a corner. I find that the best way to encourage comments is to regularly do so yourself on other people’s blogs. Another tip is not to cover every angle of a debate in your post. Always allow scope for further discussion. Give your readers a reason to comment.
With regard to comments, I’m personally happy to allow them. Sure I'd like more but most of those that are left are a positive contribution. Those that aren't I’m still happy to leave. The rude, crass and malicious posts often say far more about the person that left them than anything else. It is also good to remember that your blog is not the same as a forum. Forums are created as specific platforms for public debate. I have always felt that a blog is more like running an open house. Although you have invited people in, there is still an expectation that they will conduct themselves in a civilized fashion. IE wipe their feet and flush the toilet if they use it. Therefore police your blog comments with that in mind, if you see fit to allow them.
Finally, whatever choice you make there is always scope to change it at a later date. It usually just involves checking a tick box in the blog's control panel. So if you have just started out blogging and have just made this decision, I'm very curious to know what choice you made. Feel free to leave a comment.
Today’s post is part of the Blaugust 2026 Group project, which features a series of writing prompts set for specific dates throughout the month. The idea being that everyone who wishes to participate can write about the same subject, riff off each other’s posts and enjoy a shared experience. In many respect having a common writing prompt levels the playing field and provides a sense of common purpose among those who take part. Today’s group project prompt asks the question “tell us all about your very first blog”. An unambiguous and interesting question that will hopefully prove enjoyable to write about and informative to others.
I have been writing online for nearly two decades. I don’t claim to be good or accomplished but what I can say with certainty is that the more often you write, the easier it becomes. For those who are new to writing a blog and the Blaugust Festival of Blogging, possibly the biggest hurdle that you now have to get over, is writing your first post of the month. You spent the lead up to this event sorting out your blog templates, fine tuning the backend and possibly banking some ideas. Or you may have decided to just wing it and make it all up as you go along. Both are perfectly valid approaches. However, there is one thing left to do that cannot be put off, avoided or danced around. Writing. At some point you’ve got to do it. Or bail on the event. The proverbial “shit or get off the pot”.
If you take a cursory look at a calendar you will see that the month of July is fast coming to an end. That means that Blaugust 2026 Festival of Blogging starts in a few days time! If you’re participating, or thinking of doing so, the next few days present a golden opportunity to do some practical organising and basic preparation. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Feel free to just do things as they come, so to speak, if that’s your approach. However, for most of us, it helps if we have some kind of plan in place and make some arrangements in advance. I personally prefer this approach and like to have some ideas for blog posts in the bank. It is also useful to have “options” if something doesn’t go to plan. For those who are new to Blaugust, here are a few ideas regarding preparation that may be of use to you. As ever, your personal mileage may vary and ultimately you are best off adopting a strategy that suits your writing style and personal schedule.
Prior to last year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging, I upgraded Contains Moderate Peril to the latest version of Squarespace. There are still some aspects of the site that need fine tuning but overall, I am happy with the appearance of my blog and its respective functionality. With this year’s writing event fast approach, I decided to tackle over the last few days, some of those finer points that need tweaking. I have wanted a post counter on the site for a long time but unfortunately there is no native Squarespace widget for this basic function. I also felt the need to upgrade the blogroll, as the current one didn’t support RSS feeds from certain sites (e.g. Google Blogger) and was dependent upon a third party service, Elfsight, which wasn’t ideal. Both of these issues have now been addressed and I am pleased with the results. There is now a post counter on the Blog Archive page, which seems a logical place to have it and the Blogroll is now far more comprehensive.
Next month the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging begins. Roundabout this time each year, I try to write a promotional post to raise awareness of the event and encourage potential participants. However, as I’ve done this quite a few times before, each year it is becomes increasingly difficult to present the essential facts about Blaugust: Festival of Blogging in an interesting fashion. There’s nothing worse than writing a post and feeling that you’re just covering old ground. So, this year, I thought I’d try something different and present the most important information about this annual event, as if it were a conversation between myself and an interested passer by. Feel free to attribute novelty voices for each party in your own head, while you read this. If it helps, try imagining that this discussion is happening between two celebrities or such like. Both may be wearing exotic hats but I digress. On with the scenario.
I read a blog post by Void recently, about finding a new internet home. He wrote about how he and many others have had to pick up their “digital roots” and migrate multiple times over the years, from one platform to another. It is a position I can sympathise with as I have done likewise. Hence I like the idea of having a place online where I hangout by default. My own blog is an anchor for me but it is not quite the same thing as a platform or online portal where I can find all my friends and colleagues, share content and shoot the breeze. It’s a curious thing, because as I typed that last sentence it struck how such a sentiment may seem alien to others. There may well be people who like to have a finger in multiple pies and who are happy to frequent and flit between various social media apps, Discord servers and subreddits. I prefer to focus my efforts on a single instance. A place that suits my requirements, allows me to put down roots and become part of the furniture. Like a virtual Diogenes Club.
Everyday, once I’m up, I sit at my desk in my office, fire up my PC and log into Feedly. I have various RSS feeds grouped by category, which I slowly trawl through and read anything that catches my eye. I have one curated feed named “Blaugust” named after the yearly festival of blogging event. It has over 250 blogs listed, many of which are former participants. Most of these regularly post. Hence there’s a lot to get through and so I don’t read all of them. However there are a few that I always checkout. Mainly because they’re the personal musings of some of our writing community’s oldest and most prodigious members. The sorts of guys and gals who are part of the furniture. They’ve always been there and it feels like they always will. Posting their thoughts, sharing their enthusiasm and spreading the love, so to speak. One of these blogs, is Tales of the Aggronaut. written by Belghast.
On Friday 26th June, I had another random spike in internet traffic to Contains Moderate Peril. The statistical package that comes with my Squarespace account recorded over 13k visits in less than 24 hours, which is not typical (although I wish it was). However, all of these visits to my blog arrived via the default homepage and spent between 1 and 2 minutes there. Hence, it was obvious that this was not human traffic, as there was no evidence of any searches being made of content that is available on my site, nor of the “visitors” clicking on any of the links on the top menu and viewing other posts. This was undoubtedly AI traffic arriving at the designated homepage and simply parsing the site. I had a similar spate of this sort of web traffic last November. The only difference on that occasion is that the traffic all came from China. This time round it hailed from the US. I suspect that this is something that will happen more often as companies set their AI loose on the net for what is effectively training.
I recently watched a video on Patreon by someone who I actively support as a “content creator” and whose work I enjoy. I shall provide no more detail regarding their identity because they may not want their work referenced with regard to what I am going to say. During the course of their video they briefly referenced the work put into promoting a podcast they are currently producing and the relatively low audience that it has garnered so far. The comments were an aside and most certainly not said with any sense of self-pity. They were simply a statement of fact. Furthermore, I suspect they are far from unique and similar sentiments have been expressed in one way or another by anyone who has created something the published it online, only for it to be lost among the greater white noise” of the wider internet.
When I first started blogging way back in 2007, I maintained a blogroll of all my colleagues and peers’ websites. At the time this was a common practice and a way to support an expanding community. I considered this such an important aspect of the blogging scene at the time, I created a website to aggregate posts from video game blogs, called The Gaming Blog Nexus. It ran for two years and proved quite useful. However, it was tricky to administer and would frequently break as a lot of the back end widgets and plugins were created and maintained by “gifted amateurs”. I eventually shut it down due to the operating costs. When I moved my own website, Contains Moderate Peril, to Squarespace in 2015 I intended to start maintaining a blogroll once again. However, at that time there was no native support for such a thing on the platform. Hence for the last ten years, I have not had a blogroll on my website, which hasn’t sat well with me.
I was speaking to someone recently about hobbies (fortunately it wasn’t Simon Quinlank) and I mentioned that I have maintained a blog for over a 19 years. When I talked about the ongoing cost they were most surprised, as they had assumed that blogging was something that could be done for free. I guess we’ve become so accustomed to the provision of free online services such as email, that this a reasonable assumption. I pointed out that although it is indeed possible to blog for free using Blogger, it was not the optimal approach, especially if you want to maintain some degree of control over your writing. Naturally, the next question they asked was how much do I spend and I gave them a ballpark figure. All of which reminded me that I wrote a post on this very subject a few years ago. So I’ve decided to revisit the subject and see how much it currently costs to maintain Contains Moderate Peril.
Today I started the slow process of auditing every post that has been published on Contains Moderate Peril since 1st August 2016. The goal is to correct any obvious typos and replace all existing images with larger ones. The Squarespace software upgrade I applied to the website at the end of last year has finally allowed me to establish a standard format that I am happy with. Hence the ongoing audit is the perfect opportunity to apply these style rules to all posts. There are also some technical issues and matters regarding functionality that need to be addressed. I need to determine how to embed YouTube videos in such a way that they automatically scale to fit whatever device is viewing them. Another area which needs improving is the website search facility. This needs refinement so that enquiries can be more specific. Older posts also need to be more accessible, although I am still researching how best to achieve this.
It’s nearly two and half months since the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event ended. During that time I’ve maintained a fairly regular writing schedule and I post every two days or so. Furthermore, I finally dragged my blog template, kicking and screaming, into the modern era. I tweaked a few pages and updated the content of the “about” page. The next task is to start going through all previous posts and replacing older, low resolution images with larger, more appropriate ones. This process also presents an opportunity to ensure that all posts follow a uniform style. IE Are appropriately categorised, have links to related posts at the bottom and are SEO optimised. This will be a lengthy task so I think the best approach will be to tackle two or three posts a day. Hopefully this will raise the profile of older content, which generates the lion’s hare of traffic to this site.
I use a browser extension called Control Panel for YouTube, which allows me to determine who many videos are displayed on my YouTube homepage and to filter the content that is shown. At present it is configured to display rows of six. Something that I have noticed of late, is the amount of videos with hyperbolic titles and thumbnail images created by AI. Both of which are design choices made to increase engagement. Clickbait titles are contrived to meet current SEO optimisation criteria and as such feature more and more in search results. The fact that they frequently have no relation to the subject I am researching, seems to be neither here nor there. The same issues arise with regard to AI generated images, which again frequently have no bearing on the matter. The fact that more and more content creators do this, infers that it works and is now an essential part of the process you must follow to be seen and featured in search results.
In the last post in this series, I specified the need for a plan with regard to upgrading my blog. Well a plan has emerged, been refined and has now been formally adopted. Rather than migrate Contains Moderate Peril to a new platform and effectively have to rebuild all the content, I am going to upgrade my existing presence on Squarespace. This decision was made for two reasons. Time and money. Migrating to a new platform will take a lot of time and incur additional costs. Upgrading the existing website will take less time and has no cost implications. That is not to say that it will be easy. It has become abundantly clear that the upgrade process will break stuff and that all published posts will have to be manually repaired. Hence my choice boils down to the lesser of two evils.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has reached an end and it would appear that this event has been well received by those who have participated in it. I believe that there were 168 bloggers taking part this year, many of whom have not participated before. Some were new to blogging, where others simply wished to see if they could increase their writing output. As ever there was a wide variety of blog styles and subject matters and it has been most interesting to read new posts every day. I have attempted to leave comments and positive feedback where I can and I hope that some of these new blogs that I’ve discovered continue to write. Well done to everyone who took part. I hope it has been an enjoyable and informative process and that you have learned from it. I know that at least one blogger has determined that writing online is not for them, which is a valuable lesson.
There is currently a group writing prompt available as part of this year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging which has piqued my interest. It asks the question “what is the oldest draft post you have” and suggests that it is revived in some manner. I have dozens of draft posts in a folder in my Google Drive. Many are film reviews or film related. The oldest of which dates back to summer 2010. Rather than write a straight forward review of Blake Edwards 1968 comedy The Party, I rather foolishly thought at the time that I’d tackle the issue of whether the film is sufficiently racist to make it beyond the pale. Let it suffice to say that I quickly found myself bogged down in the complexities of the subject and thus never completed the blog post.
I’ve participated in every previous Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event. Prior to that I was involved in the Newbie Blogger Initiative or NBI as it was affectionately known. I have therefore written quite a lot of blogging advice and suggestions over the years. If anyone feels disposed to do so, you can access them all by clicking on the “blogging” option on the top menu of this blog. However, it is important to remember that a lot of the ideas I have advocated and written about over the years are purely subjective. Not all advice or guidance works for everyone. People have different ideas about blogging, different approaches to it and different aspirations. This year has highlighted some quite distinct differences among bloggers which has been most illuminating.
Today is my blogging anniversary. I have been writing online consistently for 18 years. My earliest blogs no longer exist, although they can be found via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. My first blog was a Lord of the Rings Online fansite called Misadventures in LOTRO. After a while this morphed into a wider gaming website; Misadventures in Gaming. However, I soon discovered that I wanted to write about more than just video games, so I decided to start from scratch and created Contains Moderate Peril in February 2010. This blog endured and has been my main online presence ever since. It has moved several times for various reasons. For a while I had a sponsor, as well as a reasonably sized audience and had dreams of making money from my writing and podcast. But it wasn’t to be and now I just write primarily for my own peace of mind and amusement.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
I used WordPress as a website platform for 5 years. One of the things I used to like about it was the ability to track data and generate stats. However, I moved Contains Moderate Peril to Squarespace in 2015 for technical and financial reasons. I’ve been broadly happy with the results but there are a few niggles. Squarespace has a solid analytical package available which provides an adequate summary of website traffic. I can also determine what keywords have been used for searching the site and what posts are popular. However, basic information such as how many blog posts I’ve made over the last 9 years is conspicuously absent. I also have no obvious way of finding out what the average length of a blog post is or what the estimated reading time is.
Today’s post is part of the Blaugust 2026 Group project, which features a series of writing prompts set for specific dates throughout the month. The idea being that everyone who wishes to participate can write about the same subject, riff off each other’s posts and enjoy a shared experience. In many respect having a common writing prompt levels the playing field and provides a sense of common purpose among those who take part. Today’s group project prompt asks the question “tell us all about your very first blog”. An unambiguous and interesting question that will hopefully prove enjoyable to write about and informative to others.