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How to Start Your Blog in 2023

molodtsov.me

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Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#11

Post by cassianoleal »

onli wrote: post #7

I honestly think starting a blog in 2023 is exactly as easy as it was 2004 (the year he references), if you take the easiest route: 1. You pick a cheap shared hoster 2. You buy a domain and connect it 3. You download a PHP blog system, like Wordpress 4. You unpack the files into the webroot, configure the database (or use a blog system that supports sqlite, like Serendipity [which I develop for]) 5. Pick a theme, ins…

Depending on how much (or how little) customisation and interop you require, something like prose.sh makes blogging a lot simpler:

No need to worry about points 3 and 4, and very little to do for 5.

Backups can be a simple git push.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#12

Post by eloisant »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #4

> Running your own blog in 2023 is still needlessly complicated, especially if you have any kind of taste. Aside from taste being subjective, most of the tools mentioned are customizable. That is, you can tweak the markup and CSS to your own taste. The post starts being concerned about aesthetics but then finishes with: "Having the right tool certainly helps, but at the end of the day, what matters is what you write…

Many people (including me) use static generation with a fancy build process because we find it fun, not to save time or money.

I honestly find it more fun to setup my blog than writing content for it... Which might be a problem. (And also explain all the blog posts describing a complex setup).

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#14

Post by ivanmontillam »

onli wrote: post #7

I honestly think starting a blog in 2023 is exactly as easy as it was 2004 (the year he references), if you take the easiest route: 1. You pick a cheap shared hoster 2. You buy a domain and connect it 3. You download a PHP blog system, like Wordpress 4. You unpack the files into the webroot, configure the database (or use a blog system that supports sqlite, like Serendipity [which I develop for]) 5. Pick a theme, ins…

I do this, but without the database. I chose Grav[0] because of its flat-fileness, but at the same time I did not want a build process (I mean, why? why do I need to rebuild my blog every time I post?)

Put it behind a CloudFlare free tier. Been happy forever after.

--

[0]: https://getgrav.org/

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#16

Post by otras »

For the combination of Hugo and GitHub Pages, images are pretty effortless as well. For example, for a post with a path of `content/posts/post-title.md`:

1. Add the image at `content/posts/post-title/image-name.png`

2. Add markdown that references it, like `![alt-text](image-name.png)`

3. Build and push to main, and then the image is available in minutes at `/posts/post-title/image-name.png" rel="nofollow">https:///posts/post-title/image-name.png`

Part of the reason I use Hugo is because it's so low friction — the hard part is the writing (and writing consistently), and keeping everything else easy is key.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#18

Post by lloydatkinson »

A lot of expected pessimistic HN comments that seem to miss the point here. I think SSG's are pretty damn good, I use Astro. People seem to think that SSG's forces you to use markdown or something, they don't. It's literally a mechanism where content from somewhere is turned into static pages. You can even use Wordpress and it's API as the source of the content for a SSG.

In my case I use MDX, which is Markdown that allows components (eg React) to be embedded. This is great for interactive content, articles with charts, visualisations, etc.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#19

Post by onion2k »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #9

There’s also the option to ask someone with skills and expertise to set something up for you. Which is almost never taken into consideration as an option in this kind of posts. I don’t think it’s hard to start a blog in 2023. It’s hard to start a blog if you have very strict requirements AND you want to do everything on your own without being a developer/designer.

There’s also the option to ask someone with skills and expertise to set something up for you.

It's an option, but it's a bad option. Setting up and running a blog is not a one off process. For things like Wordpress there are literally security patches. For most other platforms there are updates. Wordpress has auto-update but it can be flaky, especially if the site owner tinkers with things.

If you get someone else to set something up for you it'll either rot, or you'll be pestering them to update it for you.

If you don't have the technical ability to run something just pay for a service instead.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#20

Post by unity1001 »

onli wrote: post #7

I honestly think starting a blog in 2023 is exactly as easy as it was 2004 (the year he references), if you take the easiest route: 1. You pick a cheap shared hoster 2. You buy a domain and connect it 3. You download a PHP blog system, like Wordpress 4. You unpack the files into the webroot, configure the database (or use a blog system that supports sqlite, like Serendipity [which I develop for]) 5. Pick a theme, ins…

None of that is necessary. Nowadays common consumer web hosts allow you to install Wordpress with a click. Actually most of them provide specialized WordPress hosting that comes with WP preinstalled and with a lot of optimization. (most of them are managed).
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