When I decided to build my blog back in 2016, I originally chose to use Github as a hosting platform because it allows flexibility of design and free custom domain rerouting that other systems such as WordPress fall short of. The downside being that it doesn’t support server-side applications such as PHP MySQL for database management. This did not deter me at the time because I never intended to manage user accounts on my blog, and I still have no intention of doing so. However, keeping an up to date record of the number of likes each post has accrued requires a platform with server-side support which my current hosting platform doesn’t offer.

After spending several days trawling through the web for potential solutions to this problem, I had a lightbulb moment which came in the form of an acquaintance who happens to be a WordPress developer. When I put the problem to him, I explained that I wanted control over the look and feel of this button and therefore using Facebook’s Graph API wouldn’t be adequate. While discussing various workarounds to this problem with him, I was immediately taken aback when he asked me why I wanted to implement a ‘Like’ button on my blog posts and why this feature was so important that I was spending all this time trying to get it to work.

This really made me think back to why I started blogging in the first place. I needed a medium for self-expression, a place to catalogue my thoughts. And if by doing so I managed to inspire others with my writing, all the better. Recently though, I seem to be caught up in the illusion of ‘likes’. I call it an illusion because the number of likes a post obtains shouldn’t determine how valuable that post’s content is. But to many people nowadays, it does. Taking the social media platform, Instagram, as an example, if I post a picture of myself playing frisbee with my dog at the beach and another picture of myself sunbathing at the same beach, the latter is likely to get more likes than the former. By getting caught up in this illusion, I may lose track of the fact that I was having a lot more fun in the former picture than in the latter. I realised that the same is true for my blog posts.

The mere fact that a blog post receives many ‘likes’ is not an indication of how great the post’s content is – and vice versa. Someone who clicks the ‘Like’ button may not have read the post and will not be able to judge whether I have expressed my ideas in an articulate manner or if I have made a compelling argument in that post. Realising this, I was completely stumped as it became clear that this feature was totally unnecessary. Yet, I still believed reader engagement was crucial to helping me improve my writing.

After a bit more brainstorming, I decided to settle for a comment section; not in the typical style of social media comments but implemented as anonymous feedback forms where readers could share their advice and opinions on each blog post. In this way I would be receiving more valuable information on the quality of my post content.

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