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How to Start Your Blog in 2023

molodtsov.me

211–220 of 257 posts

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#211
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 did something similar but used wiki syntax with a handful of extensions. The source content was stored in a specific directory layout/scheme and the site code generated the page hierarchy from that, storing it in an adjacent cache dir. Coming from a sysadmin background, it seemed very natural and easy to manage. Definitely the way to go.

One day I'll clean it up and offload it to github for others who are like-minded.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#215
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 did something similar but used wiki syntax with a handful of extensions. The source content was stored in a specific directory layout/scheme and the site code generated the page hierarchy from that, storing it in an adjacent cache dir. Coming from a sysadmin background, it seemed very natural and easy to manage. Definitely the way to go. One day I'll clean it up and offload it to github for others who are like-mind…

This sounds almost exactly like something I whipped up in the early 2000s [1]. Each post was its own directory (so I could just drop images in), and it used file system metadata for dates. It was based on Bash, ImageMagick, sed, m4, head, tr, and... XSLT (I swear it seemed like a good idea at the time!).

Believe it or not, the tool actually even worked with Cygwin after I switched to Windows (on my very first laptop).

[1] https://log.schemescape.com/posts/static-site-generators/pre...

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, could you today run a ruby based SSG from 10 years ago? Let's pretend there is a bit of custom code and time invested in it. I guess you could install a bunch of old versions on Ruby, gems, etc. on your machine too, but docker, or a VM might be easier. Or you could go through, remember how all the code works and upgrade it to the latest versions of everything to run it. Assuming the SSG du jour 2013 is s…

You don't need docker for that. Also if you leave a WordPress for years with auto-updates, the plugins will often be abandoned causing your site to be vulnerable.Not to mention any breaking changes that can be introduced. A SSG generated site will be the same in 10 years as its today, even if you might need to fix some things with your project to make further updates.

You basically just said wordpress will bitrot but SSG tools are immune.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#217
Needlessly complicated? there’s a thousand ways to start a blog in 2023; sure, your artisanal handcrafted static site generator can handle traffic, but so can my free Substack blog

The hard part is sticking to it; content is truly king

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#219
Creator of Bear here. I've actually done a full writeup recently on how Bear is more immune to being discontinued than some of the bigger VC funded platforms. If you're interested I've linked it below.

- https://bearblog.dev

- https://herman.bearblog.dev/building-software-to-last-foreve...

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need docker for that. Also if you leave a WordPress for years with auto-updates, the plugins will often be abandoned causing your site to be vulnerable.Not to mention any breaking changes that can be introduced. A SSG generated site will be the same in 10 years as its today, even if you might need to fix some things with your project to make further updates.

You basically just said wordpress will bitrot but SSG tools are immune.

He appears to me to have said they bitrot in different ways. Which way is preferable is a matter of priorities.
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