WordPress is actually a good example. There's the self-hosted software distributed at WordPress.org, which works in the Web 2000 fashion (here's some software, figure the rest out yourself). And there's the hosted service at WordPress.com, which works in the walled-garden fashion (though with liberal allowances for things like getting at your data, which is nice).

Lots of people run their own WordPress installations, but very, very few of them manage to do it well -- properly locking the software down, keeping the core and plugins up to date with security patches, putting the admin area behind SSL, etc. Which is why there's so many hacked WordPress sites out there.

Yeah, I would go do far as to say that WordPress made something inherently difficult look easier than it actually is (in addition to some parts which really are easier: as in, there are two metrics, and the former was lowered in an amount much greater than the latter), causing a bunch of people to mistakingly believe that they can handle it themselves; sometimes, a weird configuration file format, or a requirement that you get four pieces separately and stitch them together, is not making something harder for no good reason: it is a subtle indication that helps people understand when they are getting in over their head.

I liken it to the idea that the Infested Forest should look as dark and imposing as it is dangerous: replacing the craggily trees with candy canes and the wolves with golden retriever puppies (still trained to kill, mind you), and carefully laying a golden brick road through the center for easy access with a new sign at the entrance reading "Welcome to the Friendly Forest (Version 2.0)", makes a very dangerous situation look much less scary than it should... the "looking scary enough--or just being difficult enough to navigate--that you don't go in without an RPG party wearing enchanted armor carrying Ariadne's thread" was actually a feature, not a bug.

You made me think, "If only there were a host where you could install the software with one click, and it would automatically update itself..." Follow that thread far enough and the line between a blogging service and a hosting service begins to blur.

The real objective, I think, isn't to get everyone hosting their own stuff, but to popularize technologies that both allow data portability (you can move to another service), and are easy to use.

But WordPress has kind of already done this. They have step-by-step directions[1] for moving from a WordPress.com blog to a self-hosted install.

People who prefer Tumblr (an example of a blog host without an export function) to WordPress do so for reasons that seem orthogonal to data portability:

1. simpler, even easier to use,

2. aesthetics (sleeker design),

3. social networking features built in,

4. reach (because of #3, it's a lot easier to accumulate readers and engagement).

In theory, a service with an open-source codebase, or support for a standard export format, could provide all this. In practice, one hasn't.

Edit: icebraining pointed out downthread that you can mostly export a Tumblr blog by adding '/rss' to the URL of each page, a process that is easily automated.

[1] http://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-a-blog/#moving-to-wor...

> You made me think, "If only there were a host where you could install the software with one click, and it would automatically update itself..." Follow that thread far enough and the line between a blogging service and a hosting service begins to blur.

This is one of the things the large hosts (Bluehost, GoDaddy, Dreamhost, etc.) are very keen on, and they've been doing lots of work to try and get this to a good level. It's one driving factor behind the push in the WordPress community to get automatic upgrades built in.

> Edit: icebraining pointed out downthread that you can mostly export a Tumblr blog by adding '/rss' to the URL of each page, a process that is easily automated.

In fact, WordPress has a Tumblr importer: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tumblr-importer/

Notably though, it's built on their JSON API, not on the RSS, so it's not really an open standard.

You mean like this? http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Available_One_Click_Installs

I've thrown up a couple of basic WP installs on there in the past. One-ish click install and it Auto updates.

Windows Azure Websites (http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/web-sites/) is similar to what you're describing, you can install a variety of popular platforms in one click (ie Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke,...) and get up and running right away. You own your data, the apps (ie Drupal, not Azure itself) are open source, and most things are easily managed for you.

I write a lot on both WordPress and Google Plus, and Google Plus is way easier for basic authoring. Image uploading, post re-sharing, dealing with comments...all much simpler on G+. I still use WordPress because I prefer to own more important content, but I'm under no illusions about ease of management and writing.

"And businesses exist that will even make that as easy as filling out a form."

Which businesses? I recently migrated to one of the major dedicated WordPress hosts and it was anything but the trivial experience some make it out to be.

I've had a job where babysitting the hosting business clients was part of service description. Including things like custom WP plugins, and modifications. Dig that.

Must have been fairly lucrative at the time, now that I think of it. But it must have made sense for the client, as some of them I see are still hosting their business with that firm; that's a small sample and just a few years down the line, but are you sure you're not looking at the subject from inside your own bubble?

Also, Blogger, the service that the link in the paragraph "... publishing tools that epitomized all of these traits..." was referring to. Or, more modernly, Tumblr. These are all sites that give you your own [sub]domain, where you make the rules and you control (almost) all the data, and where, even if there are other mechanisms for connecting things together, you can still just pull an RSS feed of all the relevant content and mash up whatever you like.

I wasn't aware that Tumblr had an export function, and it looks like, officially, it doesn't[1]. There is a third-party migration tool to WordPress[2], but that's about all I can find. So unfortunately, not all is roses.

It would be nice if there were a standard format for storing blog posts and their metadata and attachments, so you could move from anything to anything. Perhaps the nascent Tent protocol[3] could do that when it's mature.

1. http://smarterware.org/8026/why-not-tumblr

2. http://tumblr2wordpress.benapps.net/

3. https://tent.io

Tumblr has a JSON API [1] that is fairly usable, and provides access to the essential parts of blogs (and terms of use explicitly allow building data portability applications on it, which is a nice touch). It's not instant-export, and I get the impression nobody uses it so it might not be rock solid, but if you need to export data, it's possible.

This tumblr2wordpress tool is probably built on it. So is Jekyll's tumblr importer. Honestly, the lack of export tools for Tumblr probably comes less from a lack of demand than anything else.

[1] http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/api/v2 [2] https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/blob/master/lib/jekyll/mig...

As far as I'm concerned, there's already two formats: RSS and ATOM. One can "export" a Tumblr blog by simply appending /rss to the URLs.

That seems to only provide the newest 20 posts.

If RSS went all the way back to the beginning, then you'd be right, it would get you 99% of the way there.

You can append /rss to the pages, e.g. http://[blog].tumblr.com/page/2/rss

It'd be nice if they supported <link rel="next"> tags, but it's still extremely easy to dump the content.