Breakage
I'm sick of breaking things. I've always firmly believed that Cool URIs don't change. And yet, I'm constantly moving things around and breaking things. I don't mean to, but it happens anyway. For example, I lost nearly all of my blog's images from 2012 in a botched move between two blogging platforms. I hate that.
There are a couple of solutions that I know of (not including the unlikely, “Never change anything”).
One option is to always put everything under a single domain and either never leave, or be damn sure that there are sufficient redirects in place as needed so that old links continue to work. This is what I've tried to do for years, but inevitably there are problems. I'd love it if I was Kottke or Winer or the like and remain happy just posting away at the same domain using the same tools for decades. Unfortunately, I'm not that guy.
Or, I could embrace my experimental side and use multiple sites and domains and just leave things be, even after I stop using the platform or tool. This is, counterintuitively, the approach I should take. The problem is that everyone loses track of where I'm posting things. I'm sure it's annoying.
So, what about my vast numbers handful of followers?
I've been thinking about that, and I feel like the best way to handle it is to create a consolidated RSS feed. The best solution I've found for this is the WP RSS Aggregator plugin for WordPress. It so happens that I maintain a WordPress blog at Copingmechanism.com, so I've configured the aggregator there.
I call it my “Everything Feed” and can be found here: copingmechanism.com/everything
This is an RSS feed containing posts from the following sites (so far):
I have not yet found a good way to generate an RSS feed from the wiki but will add it once I do.
I'd prefer the Everything Feed was on a different domain, but that's the only place I'm running WordPress at the moment. I've also added a redirect from a nicer URL, baty.net/everything, but I'm worried it'll break 😜.