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Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

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Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#52
post #35

I've been using pelican [1] with S3 for my blog [2]. It comes with a nice makefile that handles the generation (markdown -> HTML), dev server (localhost:8000 that regenerates files upon modification) and deployment to S3 (uses s3cmd along with API keys to upload to a designated bucket). It offers GitHub, ftp, ssh, and dropbox options for deployment as well, but I've never tried them. [1] https://blog.getpelican.com […

Also rsync (the one I use).

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#53
post #42
post #32

To avoid updates and viruses, go with a static site. There are a ton of good static site generators out there. My blog[0] runs on Jekyll[1]. Hugo[2] is a popular option. I've fiddled with Gatsby[3] and heard good things. Eleventy[4] looks as close to Jekyll-but-in-JavaScript as I've seen. Since you want to be able to customize it, I'd probably take the static site generator's language into account. Do you like... Rub…

Static blogs are ok until it's a smallish blog with not much content or many visitors. But can't recommend it for a serious blog proect. One would have to jump through the hoops and use hacks for even the basic things like commenting, searching etc. And forget about slightly advanced stuff like popular posts, related posts etc without some Hugo or Jekyll hacking. WordPress has the lowest barrier to entry as most shar…

I agree that getting things like comments and search running on a static site is a lot work. But I’m of the opinion your personal site doesn’t need those things.

Rarely have I seen interesting discussion happen in the comments of a personal blog. All great discussion is held in aggregators like HN.

Similarly search is best left to specialized platforms such as a search engine. Blogging software may have decent search by why recreate a search engine when duckduckgo.com will far exceed capabilities with site: and filetype:?

For me a personal site and blog are mostly single visit kind of stops. I end up on a blog via a link but almost never do I feel the need to read the top 5 best posts of some blog. I got some interesting information from the current article but then I’m of to the next link that shows up in my feed.

In my opinion a website needs readability[0] and an ATOM/RSS feed. All the rest is part ego ("my content is so great people just have to see what else I wrote") and part feature creep.

[0] https://www.sinax.be/blog/general/guidelines-for-spartan-web...

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#55
Static sites are cool but annoying to customize. WordPress is cool but a server is annoying to maintain.

Solution: build on WordPress, use wget to pull a mirror, serve that as a static site. This is way more common than you may initially guess.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#56
post #17

I wrote my own one-off static site generator. It is freeing. Anything is possible, and nothing is in your way. It really doesn't take that much time. https://github.com/pauldotknopf/pauldotknopf.github.io/blob/... https://pknopf.com/

Yeah I find just knock something up in NodeJS. Then when you need to do something custom you are writing JS. Familiar stuff. Compare that to the headache of figuring out how to get Hugo templates to do anything non trivial. Or even getting Jekyll to run.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#57
I use Hugo for my blog but also for other non-blog sites. Generating static HTML gives me peace of mind and Go is super fast at regenerating the site. Deploying is a joyful process using GitHub and Netlify. I’d go static just to use Netlify. And the best part for me is the tech is “boring” so I just focus on the content, rather than on the blog platform.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#58

I use Hugo for my blog but also for other non-blog sites. Generating static HTML gives me peace of mind and Go is super fast at regenerating the site. Deploying is a joyful process using GitHub and Netlify. I’d go static just to use Netlify. And the best part for me is the tech is “boring” so I just focus on the content, rather than on the blog platform.

Your posts have been helpful, thanks for the writing you do!

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#59
post #47
post #31

Highly recommend the ghost platform. It gets out of your way and lets you focus on writing. Nothing else. You can customize it as much as you want but it's primary focus is getting you to writing first. This is assuming you are willing to pay for at least your own server. Their hosted option is also great and highly recommended if you want to just start writing before thinking of customizations. I find static site ge…

Does Ghost support commenting yet? Can't imagine a blog without a commenting feature.

There's several comment integrations you can choose from https://ghost.org/integrations/community/

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#60
> I really want to focus on the writing and not deal with updates and viruses.

In such case, html+css might be a good choice for you. Using static site generator could make it easier to maintain your blog. I personally like Hugo due to its speed.

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