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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

#151

Post by boredemployee »

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…

Could you explain how do you do it? I really want to have a blog but I don't want to fuck with wordpress and all that I know is a little bit of html, python and sql.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#152

Post by quickthrower2 »

I almost always use Wordpress for Blogs and sites in general.

Reasons:

If I leave it for 10 years and come back I will know how to maintain it. The tools will exist (especially if WordPress auto upgrades).

If I use some static site gen, I will need to remember all the syntax, use some docker container to run the version I used all that time ago. Even coming back to it after a year can leave me with confusion.

Also WordPress has a brilliant ecosystem of plugins and themes. And if you are worried about security, there are plugins that will pump it out into a static site on S3, if you like, so you can use WordPress to author, and S3 to host.

The WordPress ecosystem can rival most no-code tools too.

Also hosting is ubiquitous, and cheap, and usually simple (open CPanel, hit install new Wordpress Blog).

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#153

Post by schemescape »

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…

Mind sharing a link to your blog?

I'm also a "tooling minimalist", but I'm curious how you handle things like grouping posts (or do you just not bother?).

Assuming everything's not on a single page, how do you avoid tedious duplication?

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#154

Post by criddell »

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 don’t know if you can still do this, but you used to be able to create public folders on Dropbox. Dave Winer ran a bunch of experiments serving a blog from a public Dropbox folder and IIRC, it worked great.

If you are already paying for cloud storage somewhere, you might be able to start by saving your writing to a public folder. Instant blog.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#155

Post by losvedir »

akshayrajp wrote: post #25

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 moved from jekyll (to hakyll) to hugo years ago since I found working with Ruby and its libraries slightly annoying and Hugo (packaged as a simple binary) more straightforward to use.

That said, I haven't updated my blog in years, and at this point I'm not sure I still know how to! But the good thing about a static site generator, is it just sits there in S3, costing me just $0.14/month.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#156

Post by worldofmatthew »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #152

I almost always use Wordpress for Blogs and sites in general. Reasons: If I leave it for 10 years and come back I will know how to maintain it. The tools will exist (especially if WordPress auto upgrades). If I use some static site gen, I will need to remember all the syntax, use some docker container to run the version I used all that time ago. Even coming back to it after a year can leave me with confusion. Also Wo…

Why would you need to use docker for a SSG?

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#157

Post by fleddr »

Really weird that a very obvious choice, Medium, did not make the cut. I'm quite aware of how unpopular it is here on HN, but that's mostly a meme.

It doesn't cost anything and there's no ads. Even linking your domain to it used to be free (sadly no longer true). It has a very decent writing experience and the out of the box design is simple but effective. It has a reasonable amount of customization. It has wide support for apps.

It's part of a network so you get functionality like claps, a comment system, followers, the like. Blogging with a "social network" built-in. It has newsletter support.

I think that's a sweet deal for such low (or even zero) costs. Ultimately I'd think your writing is what the value of your blog is, not the behind-the-scenes technical tinkering. Unless that really is your thing.

Should you be paranoid about Medium going under, there's an export option.

Note that I'm the kind of person that wrote my own blogging software in the early 2000s. Tinkered and managed it that way for well over a decade.

I've given up on it. It's time wasted. Nobody cares about your blog design, it's hard enough for anybody to care about the actual text in today's landscape. Hence, pick your battles, keep it simple.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#158

Post by karaterobot »

viscousviolin wrote: post #141
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?

It used to be a week, but then the queue of unpublished articles got to be around 150. I want it to be around a year, but it was more like 3 years, which I thought was just silly.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#159

Post by idlewords »

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…

Fellow raw HTML writer chiming in. My hand-built little web app for blogging broke maybe five years ago with some OS X update, and I have been too lazy to fix it.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#160

Post by idlewords »

boredemployee wrote: post #151
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…

Could you explain how do you do it? I really want to have a blog but I don't want to fuck with wordpress and all that I know is a little bit of html, python and sql.

  
    Title
  
  
  
2023.02.20

  
This is the first paragraph.

  
This is the second.
Save that as "blogpost.htm" somewhere a web server can see it.

Add stylesheets and so on as you get more comfortable, but it really is that simple. All that matters in the long run is what you put between the

tags.

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