I use https://www.metalsmith.io/ for my site and it works great, but any static site generator will do the same. No comment functionality but that’s fine by me.
Static sites are cheap and easy to host. :)
Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?
11–20 of 115 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?
#12I am very happy with Pelican, with isso for self-hosted comments.
Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?
#13Jekyll + GitHub Pages = Static blog with free hosting
You could substitute Jekyll for other supported frameworks.
Pros:
* Markdown (so super flexible)
* Git as the backbone (free CRM, free history)
* Customisable (if you know how to code)
* Free templates
Cons:
* Jekyll is a bit of a pain on Windows but should be fine on Linux/Mac
* Images might not load super quick from GitHub's servers
* You need to know basic Git
Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?
#14I personally use Jekyll for all my static website needs (including my homepage); probably better options out there (certainly newer ones), but I like that it's a first-class citizen for GitHub Pages (not relevant for my own homepage, which runs off a VPS in Iceland, but certainly relevant for the couple of FOSS projects of mine that have their own websites) and if it ain't broke, why fix it? Any similar static site generator should be right up your alley - Hugo included.
It's been a dream of mine to someday do everything via Emacs' Org Mode, but I haven't yet felt motivated enough to take the plunge.
Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?
#15This sounds like a job for Hugo, GitHub and Netlify.
Simple. Easy. Free.
You can even set up a form and get comments into your email. (Then just manually copy/paste into the markdown and commit it again and force a rebuild).
I use that setup and I love it.
Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?
#16Org mode and html export. If you want to be fancier, there is this: http://ahungry.com/blog/2013-04-01-blogging-with-org-mode.ht...
There might be other stuff like that as well. I just use org directly, though I guess in a "blog-like" manner rather than as a true blog.
Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?
#17Jekyll, all the way.
Easy and free to get going on GitHub Pages.
Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?
#18Replaced my Octopress blog with 200 lines of babashka (Clojure) and blogged about it here:
- https://blog.michielborkent.nl/migrating-octopress-to-babash...
- https://blog.michielborkent.nl/better-clojure-highlighting.h...
- https://blog.michielborkent.nl/markdown-clj-babashka-compati...
Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?
#19A key take away from many years of running a blog as a static website is that may add friction to your process. Unless you have some sort of CI/CD going on, the chances are that one can only post from their own computer, while using something like Wordpress allows them to post from anywhere — including their mobile devices — which leads to a ton of serendipity.
You might want to evaluate if posting from multiple devices is important to you, and if you're willing to setup some process to do it with a static website. I'm not saying that it can be done, I'm just highlighting that it is not something you can automatically take for granted.
An option that you might want to consider is GravCMS[1] which is PHP based. It has an interactive app for admin and posting, but once you post it generates static files. So from the point of view of the server and your readers, your website is static. You can still post from anywhere though.
I'm sure there are other similar solutions, and that someone has a SaaS to solve this which they think it will be the next unicorn. Anyway, just another thing for you to consider.
[1]: https://getgrav.org/
Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?
#20I use Pelican mainly because if I ever need a plug-in to do something very particular, I'd rather use something I'm extremely familiar with (Python).
I host in Netlify with my own domain name.
Link in profile if interested.