*banned 4 MarkDown love* @design_RG@qoto.org

Beautiful Persian & Tabby mix, Beast is gorgeous. #xp #moa
---
RT @Beast_the_Cat
The only closeups that I want feature treats 🤔😸
#whiskerswednesday #catsoftwitter
https://twitter.com/Beast_the_Cat/status/1202107491204644864

@IshaKaushik@mastodon.social Sensible idea, Isha. 😛

And on that note, breakfast.

@anarchiv Fascinating, thank you for the post. Tin mining in Cornwall, today's southwestern UK was a big motivation for sailors to travel very very far, risk it all in the open Atlantic on their small ships. Phoenicians had outposts in the coast of today's Portugal long before the Romans came.

Combining History, Geography and Economics is a great way to better understand the times they lived in.

@VidyaKrishnan Thank for the post. Wikipedia has an interesting page about the ship and the legend it became. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Dutchman

@Fabrice_tual Thank you, beautiful gravure!

@drabard Thanks for the post. I liked the stark simplicity of your site. Nothing much to worry about but the writing that goes into the page.

Just started looking at blogging with write.freely, and your pages remind me of it. I found writing in their editor very focused, like working in a text editor versus a full blown word processor.

Sometimes, that's what we need. TY.

@_lunawinters

It looks delicious on that photo. Yummm.

@shivam_janus_bahuguna@mastodon.social

A picture, or it didn't happen.

Saved the page, it's just started and not published yet. But there should be a preview available here: https://rgx.vivaldi.net/?p=13&preview=true

A Quick look at a more complex Blog setup.

Along with trying out the Write.freely open source, fediverse compatible system, I went and opened up a free blog at Vivaldi.net. This is the company providing the Vivaldi browser, and they also offer a free email account and a free blog if desired.

For curiosity and comparison purposes, I went ahead and started a first post. The blogs at Vivaldi are using WordPress, and offer a lot more controls, formatting options, online image hosting, but at the price of a more complex interface to be learned.

It looks interesting, but will take some time getting used to and knowing the tools and options.

The write.freely seems aptly named - as there's very little to distract you from writing away, concentrating in the words, less distractions.

Leaving here a screen shot for the record.

For first time users, I would suggest the write.freely ones, unless you are prepared to cram for a few days to get over the learning curve quickly.

I am including two snapshots - the editor area can work in either Visual Mode, with images displayed in full size.

Or in Text Mode, where you see Raw HTML, tags and nitty gritty, but sometimes can be a nice way to work, fix glitches.

Do note there's a lot more visual clutter around. 😛

For the record, @freemo had recommended to me write.freely and I think that is a good recommendation for casual users, to get started, it will be easier.

@teknonomicon

A little side trip, have been looking at finding a decent image hosting service. I did use those in the past, when I was very active in Forums, and had a good experience.

EXCEPT - when they change terms of service, want to charge now, or simply disappear all together.

The last happened with a site I used a lot, since it was simple and reliable; until it wasn't.

Thye were gone, and all the images posted in hundreds of forum posts were also gone from them. The addresses on them no longer worked, a major pain.

Frustrating. So went looking again, and it's a mixed bag those days. I don't want to use a Google photos space because of tracking. Prefer a site that is not too small, but not Big Tech.

A decent one that gives me proper, full image URL to use in blog post is https://postimage.org

They have free service, show full urls, and seem decent. Will they be around for the long run? Unknown, but at the moment that might do.

Screenshot below shows the image data info with various formats - for forum use, or full url to use in html coding.
@rgx@wordsmith.social @rgx@write.tedomum.net

@Absinthe Well done, you are on a roll! 😉

@teknonomicon

Ah, I am glad to know. Was feeling like I was spamming the feed a bit, but needed the testing. Getting there now, I got one that works.

Will post a more polished version when I get it all working.

@rgx@wordsmith.social @rgx@write.tedomum.net

@Keeneire
You are welcome. 😄

@mewmew

@rgx@wordsmith.social

Experimenting is needed, not all places offering blog hosting have the same features.

write.as which has a nice video, showing easy fediverse connections, also has a lot of limitations for Free accounts.

The Fediverse instances list for write.freely can be useful -- Although a lot of them are NOT open to registrations, check the rightmost column.

https://fediverse.network/writefreely

From that page, I looked at a couple of instances, there's one in Canada: https://fediverse.network/personaljournal.ca

...and settled in another one, located in France, under better European Union privacy protection rules. https://fediverse.network/write.tedomum.net

This last one, I created a new blog, copied my test post, and did the searching for the account here in Mastodon.

It did work, the account was found. After I published the page there, it showed here as a Toot, which I can click to view (has link to web page hosting) and reply with comments to.

@rgx@write.tedomum.net is my current testing page. Click on the username and it will show a typical Mastodon user page, with stats and toots listed.

@rgx It worked, and shows up here as expected! 🆗

@rgx Tested and works as expected, the barebones first post is getting prettier. I like it, edit and saves are very fast.

Now, if I can reduce the number of TABS open here... That would greatly help. 😜

@rgx

The blog editor only allows formating via html tags. You can type in easier ones, but a time saver can be an extension for your browser that natively supports markup languages.

Found one, I have used a similar in the past for Forums, with BBcode tag formatting.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bbcodewebex/