bits as I called it is actually my notes and thoughts. A simple expression would be like tweet≤bit≤blog.

tl;dr WordPress.com support Markdown for posts, pages, and comments. Tumblr only supports for posts. You can read my bits on WordPress.com.

About two months ago, I began to experiment using a Gist to store some of my quick notes. The reasons of doing that has been explained in that Gist.

A few days ago, for some unknown reason, I wasn’t able to add more comments after #66. The issue was resolved on its own later, but during the time, I was looking for a solution, then I read about WordPress now supports Markdown. Not only you can use Markdown to write posts on WordPress.com, but also comments. Yes, you can use Markdown to comment, just like Gist.

If the support came up a month early, my bits would be started with WordPress.com, not Gist. I guess the solution is always coming along eventually, if you keep looking for one.

There was another option popped up, Tumblr, but since it doesn’t have comment system as I know and no third-party service has supported Markdown. Tumblr didn’t become a viable option for me. Besides, two systems may have different Markdown syntaxes. I was actually hoping that I got a chance to try other than Blogger and WordPress, but I didn’t have one.

So, I now moved my bits to WordPress, called bits, but with “b17s” in URL, because “bits” is taken.

Since I haven’t used WordPress system for years, it took me a while to customize as much as I could with its free plan. The theme I chose is Typo, one of simplest ones but still with some degree of style. Page loading time is around 10 seconds, which I thought it’s a bit of long, but that’s okay.

If I have to nitpick something, then it’s the link color, the red on a grayish theme really doesn’t blend well. Unfortunately, I will have to pay 30 bucks just for color customization. Luckily, featured color palettes are free, I chose a darker one.

At first, I disabled all the sharing buttons except the Like button, the putting the sharing buttons all back up in text form. One post got two people liked in matter of just hours, one more on second day, another one on the day after. I don’t know how they got to read that post, better not to be some kind of Like spamming. I somehow have a feeling, “bits” might get more popular than this blog only if those ain’t so suspicious. The country data in Stats looked like only me visiting those pages, not sure how they read those if those were really by humans.

With a blog system, now I don’t need to create a new Gist each year, which I planned to do so with GitHub Gist; and each note has its own post page and I could reply to the note as comments as development/tracking notes. An extra point is I could use that 3 GB spaces for uploading screenshots or photos, nice!

Generally, WordPress.com is okay as blogging service, above average I would say, especially it’s only one (blog hosting service) supports Markdown well. Cons are the themes always don’t look right for some tiny things, but either you pay or you accept those.

I don’t plan to add “bits” into Ultimate YJL, since it’s for notes, they might not be organized and could have large amount of posts a day. Although this blog’s posts most of time ain’t, either. If you are interested in reading my notes, go ahead to grab the feed.