My daughter asked me to set her up with a blog on her own server. We did it, and there is now a Hello World post somewhere out there on the web. But it wasn't a good experience, compared to what I know posting on Instagram is like. And that's just on the publishing side. The chances of her site being even indexed, let alone visited, is tiny.
It's surprising* that rolling your own on the web has gotten harder, not easier, in the last 20 years. But it has.
*Surprising in the narrow sense that technology usually improves. I know all too well why lone sites don't do well on the web.
But why care about whether your daughter's site is indexed. Share it with friends and if there is actually interesting content on there they will share it further. This whole idea that search engines are the be all and end all of being on the web and once you have visitors you need to somehow capture them is a big part of what is wrong with the web IMO. I much prefer a more organic web where people put themselves out there and don't worry much about it becoming popular or worse, profitable. Do it for yourself or a select group of people you actually know and can interact with, not faceless Referrer: google visitiors.
Part of the fun of publishing is having readers. But even if you're OK nominating specific readers rather than letting anonymous ones find you, you wouldn't believe how skills like clicking a link have atrophied. You can send someone a URL, and they won't actually click on it because it arrived on their phone, they wanted to look at it on a laptop (because it's your kid's grandma who can't see well anymore), and they can't remember how to scroll back in SMS history, let alone send themselves a link.
So what do they do instead? They type <granddaughter's name> into their browser, and then call me asking if they should buy McAfee because the computer says they have a virus.
I agree that search engines are not the only way to reach content on the web (web != social networks). But for most people today, they are.
Well, anything in current social networks is also impossible to find. It is made for ephemeral content, if it goes viral, you get tons of likes. If not, it might as well never have existed.
The number of clicks required to get to that one click is quite high. The competition is Instagram, which actually has a negative number of clicks to get going (they won't let you continue browsing without an account).
It's surprising* that rolling your own on the web has gotten harder, not easier, in the last 20 years. But it has.
*Surprising in the narrow sense that technology usually improves. I know all too well why lone sites don't do well on the web.