How to Start Your Blog in 2023 • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#141

Post by viscousviolin » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #135

Have been running the same blog, on and off, since 2001. It has gone through many iterations, including being nuked and restarted several times, using archive.org as my backup. The current iteration is optimized around not having it be a source of stress or anxiety for me. Here is my setup: * I just use self-hosted Wordpress site on a Digital Ocean droplet. * I made my own theme that strips pretty much everything out…

I like your four day interval - was the reason you choose this to not spam people?

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#142

Post by asdff » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

PixelForg wrote: post #50

Choosing the tool isn't the issue for me, writing is.

One strategy is to just always be blogging about problems you are working on, the audience being you three years from now when you forgot the context and have to solve the problem again. Best case, you now have an interesting blog related to something you have expertise in, worst case, you have a highly useful "lab notebook" for yourself you can always parse. "problems" could be things from work or from your hobbies.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#143

Post by prox » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 9:42 PM UTC

colinflane wrote: post #128

lapcat wrote: post #106

I am the "weird dude who writes raw HTML" LOL. I had a self-hosted WordPress blog from 2006-2010, but security updates become a burden, especially since I had to modify the WP source code a little to do exactly what I wanted with the RSS feeds. After a few years of not blogging at all, I decided to use the simplest possible "system", which is writing blog posts in raw HTML in a text editor, as well as writing the RSS…

I was pleasantly surprised to learn writing raw html is not difficult, at all. I am not doing Rocket Science, though. As others say, static site generators introduce a layer of abstraction. I like writing in markdown too, but if I really cared to, I could write my own scripts to translate. However, I found that html does not introduce undue overhead. I am sure I could churn out content more quickly if I were writing…

With Obsidian and an add-on you can output html pretty quickly (even with some CSS I believe)

So from writing to publishing is a short flow.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#144

Post by wslh » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 9:42 PM UTC

There is a need for security that is not addressed: install WP and some few plugins and your site will be hacked automatically.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#145

Post by BizarreByte » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

malodyets wrote: post #126

ravagat wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not pretty, but it's zero maintenance. I've been doing that for 10 years now, and I don't think I'd ever go back to a third-party dependency. SSG is third-party dependency in one way.

It seems to me that a text editor is the same sort of dependency as a static site generator. Especially if you store the resulting site as rendered.

I don’t think a text editor can be called a dependency when every computer in the last 30 years has shipped with one.

At the end of the day you have to pull in a SSG from elsewhere and run it.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#146

Post by BizarreByte » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 9:48 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #106

I am the "weird dude who writes raw HTML" LOL. I had a self-hosted WordPress blog from 2006-2010, but security updates become a burden, especially since I had to modify the WP source code a little to do exactly what I wanted with the RSS feeds. After a few years of not blogging at all, I decided to use the simplest possible "system", which is writing blog posts in raw HTML in a text editor, as well as writing the RSS…

Same here, I really can’t be bothered with SSGs or something like WP. I don’t even really bother with how my website looks, it’s as plain of HTML as you could get.

It suits me well.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#147

Post by BizarreByte » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

flangola7 wrote: post #105

Brajeshwar wrote: post #8

1. What you use or wherever you host, make sure that you can export your content in either plain text or a universal format that can be used by another tool or host it yourself. In short, own the content and use whatever tool it fits your current situations and limitations. 2. Possibly, try to get a domain of your own, and preferably a `.com`. Point that to whichever server you use (if they don't allow you to point,…

There's so many better options better than .com (commercial) .net .org .me .io .blog .info You can make it topical too .expert .engineer .doctor .camera .software Or have fun with it .lol .wtf .foo

Always worth considering your national domain if it’s easy to register. I use .ca because really why wouldn’t I?

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#148

Post by serhack_ » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 9:50 PM UTC

Weird that I remember the same infographic by xkcd, is that possible? Or another Mandela effect?

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#149

Post by russellbeattie » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 9:58 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #106

I am the "weird dude who writes raw HTML" LOL. I had a self-hosted WordPress blog from 2006-2010, but security updates become a burden, especially since I had to modify the WP source code a little to do exactly what I wanted with the RSS feeds. After a few years of not blogging at all, I decided to use the simplest possible "system", which is writing blog posts in raw HTML in a text editor, as well as writing the RSS…

Wait... You don't use an IDE taking up 2GB of RAM to write posts in "plain text" using a random flavor of Markdown, with custom extensions only supported by a single blog generator, and then use the command line to call 250MB worth of Node libraries which creates an AST from the barely parsable text file, all to then generate a basic static HTML file?

What's wrong with you?

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#150

Post by darekkay » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

sphars wrote: post #70

kblev wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way for SSGs to support viewer comments?

There's a good resource of available commenting systems for static sites here (not mine): https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/

Thanks for posting! I update that blog post regularly to keep up with all the possibilities. Ironically, I decided to remove the comments from my own blog a few years ago. Comments still reach me, though, mostly via email.