Written 2025/7/23
One of the biggest conundrums I've faced as a writer in the digital age is the question of hosting. Where can I put my words? There aren't a lot of places dedicated to short-form fiction these days-- and the most popular site for this is specifically aimed at fan works, not original works. While I do respect the craft, I'm just not part of that culture, and believe my work is a poor match for that community. That leads me to consider a blogging or wiki platform-- things such as World Anvil, Wordpress, Campfire, or Tumblr. Sure, discoverability is lacking on most of these, but it's something!
It's at this point where the second, arguably more important question comes into play-- will it last? Can I trust that the words I wrote-- the stories, the articles, the thoughts, feelings, and hard work-- will still be there tomorrow? Will I be able to write more of these tomorrow? If I share something I'm proud of somewhere-- will that link always direct to my work? If the internet goes down tomorrow, can I still write? Can I cross reference my own work if I need to?
In every case, the answer is "maybe." Maybe my work will be there tomorrow. Maybe I can write more tomorrow. Maybe others can still read it all. We've forgotten until recently that websites have lifespans. They all die, like any other living thing. They cost money to maintain-- sometimes money to use. Plans change, plans make the site worse, people are fallible, accidents happen, companies get bought out, and shareholders demand endless growth that drives aggressive monetization.
At the end of the day, all websites fall victim to one core problem: one day, outside of your control, they will be gone, and your work will sink with them. That is, of course, unless you put you eggs in other baskets.
With my own wiki, I determine when and whether this thing lives or dies. I don't have to stress about increasing subscription costs (I pay ~12$/year for my domain), any poor decisions are squarely my fault, and if a freak accident occurs (and I'm not incapacitated) I can at least try to fix it.
I built this site using StaticWiki, which is an offline Markdown based static wiki generator. That means that I write articles locally as Markdown files, and the software converts those into a basic website that doesn't even need to be online to use! So if the internet's ever out, I can still use the wiki to more easily browse my own work when cross referencing things such as lore details.
Since the source files are written in Markdown-- a commonplace and widely supported markup language-- my formatted words can quickly and easily be posted to various other websites. More importantly, it's easy to transfer this text to PDFs, for an even more stable distribution method. My word-eggs live in several baskets! Nothing can take this away from me, I trust that it will be here tomorrow-- and even if the internet goes down, I can print out everything myself. I'll sling zines on the curb if I have to!
It's also important to note that Markdown is substantially easier to write in than, say, raw HTML or BBCode. It's a language built to be quick and effective; italicizing a word only requires 2 asterisks (or a quick ctrl + i shortcut if your editor supports it), rather than chunky [i] tags. I could have handled this as a raw HTML site, but that would have been a pain to work with! Add in Markdown extensions which allow for extended syntax or things like applying HTML IDs and classes to chunks of text, and you've got something really versatile and easy to work with!
My general plan, with this, is to create more than this one wiki. I used to use a little website called World Anvil to host a series of wikis, each dedicated to one of my worldbuilding projects. I spent a LOT of time writing these, and there are hundreds of articles currently unavailable after I could no longer afford my subscription. I'd quite like to write more articles, be able to share them with other people, and have the wikis for my own ease of use when working on projects related to these settings. There's also the added, fun bonus (for me) of getting a fun playground to work on distinct CSS themes for each wiki!
Exactly what form these take is yet to be seen-- my initial idea was to host each wiki under a separate subdomain. Think qet.incaseofgrace.com, apra.incaseofgrace.com, umqwam.incaseofgrace.com and so on. This naming convention makes each wiki easier to share and remember than they would be if included under my primary domain like incaseofgrace.com/wiki/qet/ -- that's a lil clunky, as a link! It's also easier to maintain on the backend if each is treated like a separate website entirely, or at least it is for my brain. But, I may run into unforeseen difficulties and will need to do the clunkier approach. I'm writing this blog post at the tail end of development, so that this blog launches with 1 brand new post among the archived and converted ones!
If the address you're currently on is under blog.incaseofgrace.com, then the subdomain method is what I'll be using :)
Shifting gears from The Big Websites is a little scary, as there's a guaranteed audience, discoverability, and support on each of them-- but that all comes at the cost of ephemerality. I'm ultimately excited to see how this plays out. I'm sure it'll be smaller, scrappier, and more difficult to get rolling. But it's mine. I can do whatever I want with this site, and any future ones I make!
I'm looking forward to writing again, to having my own platform, to having a coding playground-- and to see how this evolves over time!