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Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

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Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#91

Post by cyber_kinetist »

soapdog wrote: post #64
rcarmo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just do git push to post, the site generator does the rest (including diffs and optimized change rendering in my case). You can git push from anything these days, including an iPad (which is basically what I do). (edit: why the downvotes?)

Yes, that is what I said. It can be done, but it is not as trivial as posting on a wordpress-based blog. You have to setup some sort of CI/CD workflow and be able to do git stuff from other devices. It is up to the OP if they want to go through that route.

I've googled a bit on this issue and it seems like you can auto-deploy on post-push easily by using Git Hooks (https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks) You just need a single simple bash script, no need for complex CI/CD stuff.

Still, you're right that doing git stuff on other devices can be a bit annoying. A web interface might be a lot more convenient if you want to edit your blog WYSIWYG on the fly.

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#92

Post by mooreds »

soapdog wrote: post #19

A 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 devi…

Yes, it depends on what you want to achieve.

If you are looking to get an understanding of deployment models, gitops, hosting solutions, CSS, HTML, and maybe do some writing, choose the static hosting option.

If you are looking to write, choose wordpress, preferably hosted.

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#94

Post by asicsp »

beshrkayali wrote: post #67

I used multiple static site generators and in 2021 I stumbled upon Zola [1] (written in Rust) and it worked really nicely. One neat little feature I like is that you could have the theme separated or as part of your site. For the theme I made a very simple html template that relies on default browser styling as much as possible. Feel free to check it out [2] 1: https://www.getzola.org/ 2: https://log.beshr.com/thelog…

I use Zola as well, but used an existing theme. The best I like is the single binary (which I can keep using without having to worry about future changes). And it builds fast.

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#95

Post by bellyfullofbac »

yunohn wrote: post #27
coffeecheque wrote: post #15

This 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.

> just manually I would find this tedious for any number of comments. Is there a better way?

Netlify has a Forms functionality, that can be used to trigger serverless functions, I was thinking it'd be possible to add the comment to a file, git push it and trigger a rebuild. Hah, rebuilding a whole site on every submitted comment seems like overkill though...

https://docs.netlify.com/forms/submissions/#form-triggered-f...

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#97

Post by LVB »

petargyurov wrote: post #13

Jekyll + 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

This is what I’m back to* after a tour through a few options over the years. Minimal overhead, and the GitHub UI is handy and perfectly adequate for small updates to content.

* https://kalafut.net/2021/10/16/blogging-setup.html

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#98

Post by cpach »

no-dr-onboard wrote: post #96

S3 has a static site hosting function. Throw your files up on a bucket via a git repo and you’re in business. Hosting+static site generation all in one. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/Websit...

AWS Amplify is even better, IMO.

Here’s an example how to use Amplify with Hugo: https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-aws-ampl...

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#99

Post by sofixa »

southerntofu wrote: post #53
petargyurov wrote: post #13

Jekyll + 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

Another con: you depend on Microsoft's good will to serve your blog, as they own Github. That kind of workflow is amazing but you should probably consider going with a non-profit software forge that runs on donations and will protect (y)our interests (like codeberg.org for example).

And there's so much competition in that space ( static site hosting) it's actually difficult to choose a provider, so if GitHub does something bad, you can switch in no time ( pending DNS propagation).

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#100

Post by smbv »

soapdog wrote: post #19

A 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 devi…

+1 for Grav: I've deployed it on my server and interact with it using the admin page and the git integration. It's simple and easily customizable, unlike WordPress. The main appeal of Grav, to me, is the hackability and ease of management compared to other CMS's. With a proper caching system, Grav is as fast as an SSG.
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