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Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

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Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#101

Post by nyolfen »

OJFord wrote: post #93
nyolfen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

big props to hugo for using a static binary without some insane dependency chain, i'm really pleased with it. hosting my blog on a $15/y vps with a vanity domain and hugo was one of my first projects to learn to manage a server, and i gave up with jekyll after way too much struggling with ruby. that said i'm not sure how it fares wrt to plugins, i think it's pretty vanilla in terms of user-facing features (though ple…

I was balking at $15 (for a static site) until I re-read and got /y right. Who offers that?

i use ramnode but you should check out lowendbox, they aggregate cheap vps services and deals

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#102

Post by pier25 »

rukshn wrote: post #37

Sadly even though it is not popular in HN WordPress is the best for you. Easy to set up and try and you can customize it as well. With lots of plugins for everything. You can go with the paid WordPress.com and they will handle all the updates for you. Static sites are good but when it is time for SEO and customisation you will realize that it can get really painful in a static site generator.

> Static sites are good but when it is time for SEO and customisation you will realize that it can get really painful in a static site generator.

My experience has been quite the contrary. I've found it super easy to get good SEO with Jekyll sites.

What have you found to be painful?

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#103

Post by hitsurume »

nyolfen wrote: post #101
OJFord wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was balking at $15 (for a static site) until I re-read and got /y right. Who offers that?

i use ramnode but you should check out lowendbox, they aggregate cheap vps services and deals

Specifically I believe you are referring to tinykvm , their 256mb ram tiny vps. I used them when I made my wedding website in flask and was very pleased with their service. Not affiliated with them at all and was a happy customer.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#104

Post by pier25 »

bishalb wrote: post #42
dceddia wrote: 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…

Those issues you mention can be easily solved with Jekyll or any other SSG. You do need a bit of hacking but the zero maintenance and raw speed of static sites is worth it IMO.

I wouldn't go with Wordpress or any other CMS unless I absolutely needed permissions for multiple authors and such or if the author couldn't handle writing markdown and using a terminal command.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#105

Post by pier25 »

bishalb wrote: post #82
majewsky wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But for a personal blog, I think both of those things(commenting and search) are absolutely essential. What I've found to work well for commenting is to put an e-mail address on the page where people can send their comments. When there is a good comment, I put an update in the article. The main advantage of this approach is that it weeds out garbage responses. By making it ever so slightly harder for people to post…

That is a good idea but would people really want to leave the site to open their email client and make a comment? I had once thought about a different approach - Creating a Google form (for each blog post) and then embedding it on the blog post. Then whenever anyone submits a comment via the form, it would get saved to a Google spreadsheet(this needs to be made publicly readable). The unwanted comments can just be de…

Or you can just post the blog post to Reddit/HN with a link to those at the end of the article and let your readers comment there.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#106

Post by gmays »

WordPress is hard to beat. For a simple blog the updates are minimal and there are even Managed WordPress hosts that will keep it updated for you as part of the hosting plan. They typically also have on boarding.setup wizards to get it all fully setup in a few minutes.

Sure, you could use something more custom, but you'll just spend more time coding rather than writing on your blog.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#107

Post by masukomi »

bishalb wrote: post #46
gexla wrote: post #39

If you have a gun pointed to your head with the requirements you have listed then you go Wordpress. Updates aren't difficult. I'm not sure about plugins (I haven't used WP in a long time,) but you can set the core Wordpress updates to be automatic. It will handle everything you need. If after a week of coding you arrive to the weekend and think "I want to do a bunch more coding" then you go with a static site generat…

Exactly. Outside of the nerd bubble of HN, Wordpress is still the defacto choice for a blogging platform. Nothing comes close to WordPress in terms of customization freedom and "zero to deploy".

at 30% of the web, and made from years of sprawling PHP it's a Wonderful attack target which is why it requires constant updating, maintaining, and unfucking from the malware that got through.

I have WP sites. I have static sites. i HATE the WP sites despite how much easier they are to use, because i'm constantly dealing with spam and BS hacking attempts (sometimes successful).

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#108

Post by masukomi »

rukshn wrote: post #37

Sadly even though it is not popular in HN WordPress is the best for you. Easy to set up and try and you can customize it as well. With lots of plugins for everything. You can go with the paid WordPress.com and they will handle all the updates for you. Static sites are good but when it is time for SEO and customisation you will realize that it can get really painful in a static site generator.

> Static sites are good but when it is time for SEO and customisation you will realize that it can get really painful in a static site generator.

care to explain? because that makes _no_ sense to me. SEO is primarily about content these days. The little "add this tag for SEO WIN" type things stopped being useful years ago. Have a good title, have good content, link your stuff well, update regularly: success!

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#109

Post by jeromescuggs »

wordpress always felt really overkill for what i wanted, and static site gens are fun for people who like to tinker under the hood. personally i use hugo, but i am still shopping around for something a little less convoluted. stumbled onto a super old package called blazeblogger and it'a been neat, but we will see

when i just want something i can setup with minimal hassle, i have always loved GetSimple (http://get-simple.info/) although i imagine mentioning a flat-file platform will probably elicit some reactions - flat-file meaning it doesn't use a database to store content, but instead simply stores the data, encrypted, in actual textfiles on your webserver. when i was using godaddy as a host, their mysql db's were always a bit laggy, and something like wordpress would always have that extra, noticeable pause during loading that bugged me to no end. getsimple with the blogging plugin was always faster, configuring it was easy, and i didn't have to stray too far outside my limited knowledge of html/css/php to play with the styling and theming.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#110

Post by tokyokawasemi »

j88439h84 wrote: post #95
dceddia wrote: 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…

SSGs are great. In Python I like Nikola. https://getnikola.com/

Pelican is also cool: https://blog.getpelican.com/
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