People and Blogs: Phil Gyford

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

I originally studied graphic design and illustration in the days before internet access. In the mid-90s I got online and immediately liked making websites, and the feeling that the whole world was suddenly much closer. I’ve been making websites professionally and/or for myself ever since. For most of the past 20 years I’ve been a freelance developer/designer. My personal website and blog is at gyford.com.

I live in rural Herefordshire, in the UK, having moved from London about four years ago.

My personal projects include The Diary of Samuel Pepys – the 17th century London diary in blog form – and ooh.directory – a collection of more than 2000 blogs organised by category. I also have a couple of sporadically-updated Tumblrs, Crazy Walls and Our Incredible Journey.

What's the story behind your blog?

I’ve had a personal website since 1995 but it was only after going to SXSW in 2000 and meeting a lot of friendly bloggers, that I started my own blog

Originally the site was generated by some code I wrote myself in Perl (it was that long ago), before I switched to Movable Type. I gradually added more customisation using PHP to glue together the various parts of the site. It became unwieldy and Movable Type was becoming less popular and less supported.

In 2018 I rewrote the site from scratch using the Python framework Django. As well as my blog the site now includes: an archive of all the links I’ve posted to Pinboard; all my Tweets (RIP); all my Flickr photos; a record of every book I’ve read over 25 years; every gig, movie, play, etc. I’ve been to over 30+ years; and my music listening via Last.fm.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

These days I mostly write weeknotes, weekly posts about some things I’ve been doing. For me this has some benefits over conventional blogging: there’s a rough deadline, which ensures I post regularly; I write about things that I might not have devoted an individual post to; and it means I get stuff out of my head that might otherwise have lingered for weeks, months, or years while I failed to turn it into a separate post. Often, not much has happened, but I tell myself that I love reading weeknotes by friends, no matter what they have or haven’t done. So it’s fine. If anyone finds it too boring they don’t have to read it!

So, to answer your questions… my weeknotes require no inspiration, just remembering some things that have happened. It probably takes me an hour or so to write and edit a post.

Occasionally I write posts that aren’t weeknotes but they've become rarer over the years. Sometimes I think I should abandon weeknotes and post more frequently. Blog posts don’t need to be well researched essays – I could write two sentences about a TV show I’ve just watched. That’s OK! That’s what a lot of blog posts were before social media grabbed all the “dash off a quick post” energy. But last time I tried doing that I ended up not posting much at all, so I returned to weeknotes, which are better for me, for now.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I don’t see writing blog posts – at least the kinds I write – as being a special “creative” endeavour that, beyond a certain minimal requirement of some time and an internet connection, requires a special environment. If you’ve ever tweeted or posted on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, you can blog. But not everyone can find the time, energy or peace to write a blog post every week or whatever, so I’m fortunate in those respects.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

As I mentioned, the site is written using the Python framework Django, with a tiny amount of Javascript for things like charts. There’s a little more detail on the About this site page.

It, along with my other sites, is hosted at Mythic Beasts who are great, with brilliant support.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

I’d either do much the same or I’d make it much less complicated, and maybe use WordPress, or something even simpler. My site is a sprawling morass of custom code, containing a lot of data aside from the main blog, which is great when I’m in the mood for tinkering with code but often feels ridiculous and over-complicated. A lot of it feels like an exercise to show what a personal site could be, and how much information it could contain, rather than what a personal site should be.

For anyone starting out I think the tricky balance is finding something that’s (a) simple and maintainable, but (b) lets you own your own data. A hosted service is the most simple and least technical but you’re then more beholden to the company running it.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

I used to host the site on Heroku which cost US$15-20/month. I now have a VPS at Mythic Beasts containing three websites which works out at about the same as if I ran each of them on Heroku separately. I could run them more cheaply, but I pay for extra support because I have no interest in, or knowledge about, running a server.

I don’t have a problem with anyone monetising personal blogs, depending on how it’s done. Memberships, Patreons, etc, all seem fine if it helps. I don’t need to generate money from my personal site and I’d start to feel beholden to readers if I did (assuming anyone was willing to pay).

After 20 years of running The Diary of Samuel Pepys, this year I set up a Ko-fi page to cover the costs of hosting and the daily emails which has worked smoothly and been helpful.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

I have a blogroll of blogs and newsletters I follow. But a handful of favourites, some of which only update occasionally:

• The Online Photographer – Nice writing on photography and other topics
• Dirty Feed – Poking into details of old UK TV shows
• Granola Shotgun – A personal view of US town planning, development, etc.
• Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd film locations (and more) – Identifying locations used in silent movies
• The Beauty of Transport – Lovely photos and descriptions of British transport infrastructure
• Orson Cart – Making horse-drawn carts

I think those are all men, sorry.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

Some things I currently like:

• Radio: NTS, especially from 7am to 11am weekdays
• App: Longplay for playing albums
• TV: ‘Dark', part-way through and just about following it
• Music: Florist is the most recent album I bought. Lovely.
• Newsletter: Garbage Day, to try and keep up with "all this"