Surprised the author didn't mention WP Engine. We (along with SmartBear, Foursquare and many others) use it at Helpjuice.com for our blog and it works great.
Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect
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Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect
#22I was a little disappointed that when he talked about Jekyll blogs, he didn't mention Octopress. The default theme looks pretty good, it has a decent set of plugins and the code display looks great. It was actually pretty easy to set up too.
http://octopress.org/ My blog using the default theme: http://www.trevoroakes.com
Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect
#23Don't most people with high-traffic blogs simply use posterous or tumblr these days so they don't have to worry about these kinds of things? That's what works for me... then the next problem rears its ugly head: bulletproofing your DNS!
People with basic blogging needs are spoiled beyond belief with services like Tumblr, but if you need more advanced things to play with, it becomes a little overwhelming.
ExpressionEngine understood the need for people with a lot of needs, but I think everyone eventually have to roll their own (using some sort of framework), if they want something that satisfies their perfectionism.
Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect
#24It's a shame that several years after the term "slashdot effect" was coined, self-hosted personal blogs are still vulnerable to this easily preventable phenomenon. The companies that host the majority of the world's small web sites, such as BlueHost, DreamHost, and (heavens forbid) GoDaddy, have not made any innovations in this department. Most VPS's are no different. NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is really good at handling t…
NearlyFreeSpeech was the cloud before it became popular.
The other services are just hosting many websites on a server.
Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect
#25Since discovering Jekyll and the fact that GitHub Pages will host your content for free, I think this would be the ideal solution. However Jekyll is a pain in the ass to use, which is why I've been working on http://jekyllbootstrap.com/
Jekyll bootstrap is intended to deploy straight-away to GitHub pages so hosting is free. I'm not finished though so any more eyeballs I get on the source will definitely be helpful. Merry Christmas =)
Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect
#26Disadvantages: Not for the non-geeky. You can only post from a computer where you have your static site generator set up
Not necessarily. I have a very simple static site generator (basically a single Python script, plus a few dependencies) running on a EC2 Micro instance. It watches changes in a shared Dropbox folder (using inotify and dropboxd) of a bunch of Markdown files and templates, and generates HTML posts, index page, and RSS automatically. I could post from any machine as long as it has my Dropbox account, even on my iPhone! No more command lines or git stuff, just write. Dropbox will take care of the rest.
Joe Hewitt's Nerve [1] works this way. I believe Marco Arment's Second Crack works similarly, too, but it's not open sourced yet.
Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect
#27He forgot the geekiest option: write your own blogging engine. It's a perfect excuse to use that new language and framework you're learning! Or, if you're not learning anything now, it's a great excuse to start learning.
While this is a great learning experience, it is hard to write a blog engine that will stand up to traffic spikes on the first try.
If your goal is learning a new language or framework, this is a great idea. If your goal is to have a reliable, traffic-resistant blog I think it's best to stick with a tried and true platform.
Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect
#28Don't most people with high-traffic blogs simply use posterous or tumblr these days so they don't have to worry about these kinds of things? That's what works for me... then the next problem rears its ugly head: bulletproofing your DNS!
Using a platform like Tumblr makes a lot of sense, but lots of people still don't do this as evidenced by all the stories on HN that link to overloaded servers.
Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect
#29Disadvantages: Not for the non-geeky. You can only post from a computer where you have your static site generator set up Not necessarily. I have a very simple static site generator (basically a single Python script, plus a few dependencies) running on a EC2 Micro instance. It watches changes in a shared Dropbox folder (using inotify and dropboxd) of a bunch of Markdown files and templates, and generates HTML posts, i…
Sounds like it still requires more setup than the average non-geek is willing to do.
Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect
#30I was a little disappointed that when he talked about Jekyll blogs, he didn't mention Octopress. The default theme looks pretty good, it has a decent set of plugins and the code display looks great. It was actually pretty easy to set up too. http://octopress.org/ My blog using the default theme: http://www.trevoroakes.com
Good point, I'll add this.