The Own Your Blog Manifesto Having your own web domain is a lost art today. It's one that I did as a necessity years ago, as it was the only way to have a website back then. I'm glad that I picked up those skills, because learning HTML and CSS led to learning JavaScript for responsive websites, and this led me on the journey of learning to code more things in more languages. Today, few people are learning, and fewer people are owning their own website. This means that fewer people are not only controlling and customizing their presence online, but they're not learning those skills which made my coding career possible. When you use a free tool on someone else's website, that means that you're the product. They own your website and they control your presence online. When you use a "no code" tool, that means that you're just using someone else's code. They own what you make and they control how you use it. What is a blog? Why have one? A blog is a weblog. It's a way of centralizing your presence online. You can link to everything relevant about you in one place. You can write about your projects, write your diary, and whatever else you want to share with the world, or have remembered as your legacy. Why should you want to own your blog? Too many people have gone through the experience of suddenly finding that their site is gone one day, after years of building their page and their audience. This can happen for many reasons, from a change of management or policy for whomever owns the site/tool that was used to make your page, to a misunderstanding leading to you being banned from social media. Even though many are aware that this could one day happen, as we've seen so many creators lose both their work and their audience after years of building, many people still turn to someone else's tools or website when they think about starting out to create their online presence. I'm here to help you learn how to navigate doing it yourself. It's not easy, but few things that are worth doing are easy. Here's how to begin: