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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

#27

I want to start my own blog but the vast number of choices overwhelms me. Deciding between Astro/Hugo/Jekyll right now. Can anyone share their experiences if they have built their blogs using these tools?

I used to use Pelican but I eventually ended up writing my own backend in Moonscript and later rewrote it in Go and then Rust.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#28
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/

> I chose Grav ... Been happy forever after.

I'm inclined to agree that Grav is a good choice, but it still has the exact same fault as other software out there, notably updates sometimes randomly breaking things in odd ways: https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken/grav-is-bro... (note: typically you shouldn't run software updates inside of containers due to their immutable nature and instead just run a newer version of the container, but if you're working with persistent volumes then there's also really nothing preventing you from doing so)

Of course, if you don't update it, you'll eventually run into security related issues, which is more or less inevitable whenever you expose anything with write access (even when it is technically protected by an username and password; our industry still keeps getting basic things wrong all the time), as opposed to fully static assets: https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken/grav-securi...

Personally, I will probably keep using Grav for the foreseeable future, maybe even some day carry over the theme customizations that I use as well as all of my content to a more recent version, but for now I'm stuck on a comparatively old version that's thankfully a bit locked down at the web server level. Don't get me the wrong way, WordPress will be even worse in regards to both updates and security, I've seen entire sites be brought down because of a single plugin needing an update that's no longer compatible with something else.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#29

I want to start my own blog but the vast number of choices overwhelms me. Deciding between Astro/Hugo/Jekyll right now. Can anyone share their experiences if they have built their blogs using these tools?

Sure, I've used [tool] successfully in the past.

Seriously, just pick one and set it up. People blog on manually edited HTML files, it really doesn't matter.

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