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Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

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Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#121

Post by viraptor »

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…

> That is a good idea but would people really want to leave the site to open their email client and make a comment?

In most cases this means tapping on the link and typing the response. Mobile OSes make it pretty seamless.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#123

Post by pier25 »

bishalb wrote: post #113
pier25 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am not sure how hacking Hugo or Jekyll could help me add commenting, searching etc. without using a third party service. Don't get me wrong, I still think they are great for small blogs and I use them myself as well for static sites but for a serious blog project or a money site, I think it is much more practical to go with a full blown solution like Wordpress. Regarding speed, with caching plugins and optionally w…

> I am not sure how hacking Hugo or Jekyll could help me add commenting, searching etc.

Searching should be left to Google. I'm skeptical blog users actually search on a site though I admit I've never seen any metrics about that.

If you insist on having comments on your site and force users to sign-in etc this can be easily implemented with an API and some client-side code.

> I would say this represents more than 99% of the bloggers.

This thread is about HN users, not the general population.

> I find markdown to be very hacky when its a bit more than just headings and paragraphs(eg. nested lists with ordered list inside unordered list are so hard to do in markdown)

Well, no wonder you prefer Wordpress.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#124

Post by pier25 »

bishalb wrote: post #112
pier25 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but again, I prefer not to offload commenting to a third party because they can ban you(reddit can ban your subreddit) or just stop their service(Google Plus comments). If I am to use Reddit, I might as well just use Disqus or Facebook comments that I can embed on the site and my visitors won't even have to leave the site to comment on a post.

> because they can ban you

Anyone can ban you, even your hosting company. In practice banning is pretty rare.

> I might as well just use Disqus or Facebook comments that I can embed on the site

And you will contribute to unethical tracking practices even if your users are not logged in to Facebook or Disqus[1].

[1] https://replyable.com/2017/03/disqus-is-your-data-worth-trad...

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#125

Post by bishalb »

pier25 wrote: post #124
bishalb wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but again, I prefer not to offload commenting to a third party because they can ban you(reddit can ban your subreddit) or just stop their service(Google Plus comments). If I am to use Reddit, I might as well just use Disqus or Facebook comments that I can embed on the site and my visitors won't even have to leave the site to comment on a post.

> because they can ban you Anyone can ban you, even your hosting company. In practice banning is pretty rare. > I might as well just use Disqus or Facebook comments that I can embed on the site And you will contribute to unethical tracking practices even if your users are not logged in to Facebook or Disqus[1]. [1] https://replyable.com/2017/03/disqus-is-your-data-worth-trad...

Hosting companies banning you is very rare(at least with reputable ones, I am not sure of the cheap VPSs on lowendbox). And you can always download the database and move to another hosting pretty easily. Subreddits getting banned is not so rare. If lets say Disqus (or reddit) bans you, how do you move those comments to another third party lets say facebook comments(or HN)?

>And you will contribute to unethical tracking practices even if your users are not logged in to Facebook or Disqus[1].

I don't care much about that because one way or the other one of the tech giants is going to track us anyway. I would much rather install Google analytics and get a great overview of my visitors. I don't think anyone who is an active user of the tracking behemothos Facebook or Google(which represents most of the internet users) should be concerned about tracking.

But coming to main point, I am actually against Disqus or facebook comments. I prefer plain old self hosted comments(wordpress) for other reasons and this solves your concern as well.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#126

Post by bishalb »

pier25 wrote: post #123
bishalb wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure how hacking Hugo or Jekyll could help me add commenting, searching etc. without using a third party service. Don't get me wrong, I still think they are great for small blogs and I use them myself as well for static sites but for a serious blog project or a money site, I think it is much more practical to go with a full blown solution like Wordpress. Regarding speed, with caching plugins and optionally w…

> I am not sure how hacking Hugo or Jekyll could help me add commenting, searching etc. Searching should be left to Google. I'm skeptical blog users actually search on a site though I admit I've never seen any metrics about that. If you insist on having comments on your site and force users to sign-in etc this can be easily implemented with an API and some client-side code. > I would say this represents more than 99%…

>Searching should be left to Google. I'm skeptical blog users actually search on a site though I admit I've never seen any metrics about that.

They do, please be assured of that. There is a reason companies like Algolia exist to provide better on-site search.

>If you insist on having comments on your site and force users to sign-in etc this can be easily implemented with an API and some client-side code.

Yes or without signing up and just commenting as guest. Welcome to Wordpress :) (And if I have to build another API just for comments, doesn't it defeat the simplicity of using a static generator like Hugo?)

>This thread is about HN users, not the general population.

I am not sure where you got that from? The author never said he was going to create a blog targeted for the HN crowd or anything like that. Maybe I am missing something?

>Well, no wonder you prefer Wordpress.

At least you acknowledge markdown's inferiority in this case.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#127

Post by bishalb »

bovermyer wrote: post #89
bishalb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blogspot is still a very good platform. If I am not hosting it myself, I would choose a Blogspot blog over a GitHub pages one anyday. And blogspot also allows advertisements which is great.

I would argue that advertisements are not, in fact, great. But Blogspot as a blogging platform is still a viable choice.

Yes of course ads aren't great but I love me some money on the side while I am blogging away :). Also I don't find adsense small text ads to be very obtrusive. 10 years ago I knew a few bloggers that were making 4 figure earnings via just blogspot blogs and adsense. Adsense pays like shit these days.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#128

Post by bishalb »

KajMagnus wrote: post #115
bishalb wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hmm interesting approach. What about reply notifications? If Jane replies to Joe's comment? Maybe with Zapier or ifttt it'd be possible to construct automatic reply notifications. ... But then, what about unsubscribe, hmm. > saved to a Google spreadsheet(this needs to be made publicly readable) Hmm, then, people's email addresses cannot be remembered, meaning, no reply notifications?

Yeah this is just a hacky solution, not very effective. Forget reply notifications, even replying to a comment in a threaded style would be tricky using this approach :)

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#129

Post by pier25 »

bishalb wrote: post #125
pier25 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they can ban you Anyone can ban you, even your hosting company. In practice banning is pretty rare. > I might as well just use Disqus or Facebook comments that I can embed on the site And you will contribute to unethical tracking practices even if your users are not logged in to Facebook or Disqus[1]. [1] https://replyable.com/2017/03/disqus-is-your-data-worth-trad...

Hosting companies banning you is very rare(at least with reputable ones, I am not sure of the cheap VPSs on lowendbox). And you can always download the database and move to another hosting pretty easily. Subreddits getting banned is not so rare. If lets say Disqus (or reddit) bans you, how do you move those comments to another third party lets say facebook comments(or HN)? >And you will contribute to unethical tracki…

> Subreddits getting banned is not so rare

If you moderate a subreddit it's extremely unlikely a ban would happen since you have control over the content.

But hey, I get it, you like Wordpress.

Re: Ask HN: Best Blogging Platform

#130

Post by chebum »

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…

Yes, the website starts to build slower with growing number of pages. I'm using Metalsmith static site generator for https://www.visualwatermark.com/ The website currently have about 400 pages and it takes 60-70 seconds to build it. Part of the problem is Metalsmith itself - the code in some parts is awful. I had to make some changes to make it work faster. Unfortunately, it's impossible to solve the underlying problem - you have to build the whole website at once, while WordPress builds pages on-demand.

Also static generators aren't as convenient as WordPress is. I'm OK working with markdown or hacking the code, but it's too difficult for my wife, for example. So, she's running a WordPress blog.

Commenting is also better on WordPress. She used to use Discuss for commenting and people are more to reluctant leave Discuss comments than to leave WordPress comments. I believe that's because you don't have to register to leave a comment in WordPress - just type your email and you're ready to go.

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