Dear HN — if php blogging platforms are junk, what do you suggest? • Hacker News Board

Dear HN — if php blogging platforms are junk, what do you suggest?

#1

Post by biturd » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 7:58 AM UTC

Wordpress is too heavy. I think many want a very lightweight blog engine. They are just one step ahead of the curve in they don't want a shared solution because they want to control their own data. I don't trust my blog on tumbler or similar, they may take it down.

Requirements: * portable, leaning me to think php is the easiest and most host friendly for free/cheap * easy install * no database for served files, fine for interim writing and working, SQLite for ease I would guess * markdown * template to make it look nice * basic ability to add analytics, SEO, etc * dashboard, stats. * ability to take to pretty much any host * handle a few hundred thousand uniques a day and don't have to worry, so HN/reddit can hit it without trouble. Do this on Apache without a CDN etc. * maybe even work on S3 or a free Amazon instance. Good learning experience to get others to learn the AWS system controls.

Ghost was suggested here the other day. I looked at it and saw it was all node and JS. I knew I was I for a server side config night of fun.

Another was posted yesterday and was semi-bashed because it was php.

So what do you suggest?

I know there's lists and lists, but installing and testing to have them fall on your face is no fun. Some have zero pull requests/downloads.

Looking for a "I stand by experience" recommendation. And to be honest, I think done right, php is an excellent language for this. Simple blog, content is king, ability to grow into a full fledged business if your writing is that good.

Suggestions?

Re: Dear HN — if php blogging platforms are junk, what do you suggest?

#2

Post by pestaa » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 9:49 AM UTC

You are in analysis paralysis. There will be no perfect solution. If you think WordPress is heavy, you never really had serious requirements for content management anyway. My suggestion? Stick with what you know.

Re: Dear HN — if php blogging platforms are junk, what do you suggest?

#3

Post by Clorith » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 10:53 AM UTC

I'll bite. What makes WordPress too heavy in your regard (I'm a huge fan of WordPress my self, so quite biased), is it the way you use it, or the themes you use?

At it's base, WordPress is quite simple, and it's the themes that define what it looks like and feels like to your users. If you are looking for something very simple then there's the simple twenty twelve theme which is very clean. The theme directory on wordpress.org is also full of themes, there's even a plugin that transforms your WordPress into "Ghost" (The same feel and layout).

But I would love to hear back on my original question as well regarding it being heavy.

Re: Dear HN — if php blogging platforms are junk, what do you suggest?

#4

Post by biturd » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 11:16 AM UTC

Clorith wrote: post #3

I'll bite. What makes WordPress too heavy in your regard (I'm a huge fan of WordPress my self, so quite biased), is it the way you use it, or the themes you use? At it's base, WordPress is quite simple, and it's the themes that define what it looks like and feels like to your users. If you are looking for something very simple then there's the simple twenty twelve theme which is very clean. The theme directory on wor…

For me, there is a lot of work setting it up, getting the themes where you want them, then finding one of 100 various plug-in's for SEO or twitter or whatever, and figuring out which is the best, and which has the least security holes.

You are right, at the core, it is simple, but it is time consuming to me. And it falls over under load unless you have a bit of time or money to throw at it, or both.

I like the idea or working in a text editor of my liking, knowing that quote marked in code aren't auto converted to smart quotes, knowing that the raw markdown is raw, and I can move it anywhere.

I am sure you can do all this in Wordpress, I am just looking to remove all that overheard, as starting a blog again is feeling more daunting than ever given my current medical issues. If I can just get it off the ground I will be happy.

But I feel I have to do something, so I want to do something that gets me to my end goal as quick as possible, but allows things to possibly grow without me thinking about what a Varnish, CDN, Cloudfront, etc all are.

Re: Dear HN — if php blogging platforms are junk, what do you suggest?

#5

Post by sadanapalli » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 11:20 AM UTC

I would suggest Octopress/Jekyll framework to serve static web pages from a VPS such as DigitalOcean/linode. You may as well use Github Pages to host your web pages if that meets your needs.

This will meet many of your needs listed.

Re: Dear HN — if php blogging platforms are junk, what do you suggest?

#6

Post by mcintyre1994 » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 11:58 AM UTC

You've said WordPress takes too long to set up, so to manage your expectations I'd probably start by claiming nothing will satisfy all your requirements. That said, what about a static blog generator? HTML is uber portable, hosts anywhere, no install, no database, I think most generate from markdown, use any template, SEO is kinda missing but just follow best practices - and you'll be fast which is a benefit there, dashboard/stats is missing, can you make do with something over log files and GA?

You said you think PHP is right for this, but why do you need that much power?

Re: Dear HN — if php blogging platforms are junk, what do you suggest?

#7

Post by allwein » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 1:31 PM UTC

sadanapalli wrote: post #5

I would suggest Octopress/Jekyll framework to serve static web pages from a VPS such as DigitalOcean/linode. You may as well use Github Pages to host your web pages if that meets your needs. This will meet many of your needs listed.

Wanted to throw in a second vote for Jekyll. It's pretty easy to setup, and nothings lower-load than straight HTML serving.

Re: Dear HN — if php blogging platforms are junk, what do you suggest?

#8

Post by krapp » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 1:53 PM UTC

pestaa wrote: post #2

You are in analysis paralysis. There will be no perfect solution. If you think WordPress is heavy, you never really had serious requirements for content management anyway. My suggestion? Stick with what you know.

To be fair to biturd, the less you're willing to trust Wordpress defaults, the more hassle it is. Once you get to the point of writing a child theme and writing your own code to enforce an html whitelist (as I do) and setting secure defaults in the config file etc. then you're basically swimming against the current of Wordpress' own practicality. You might as well just pick up slim + twig + phpass and roll your own, and it would probably be more secure anyway.

Although I do wonder, if there isn't a good static blogging solution in PHP, why there isn't.

Re: Dear HN — if php blogging platforms are junk, what do you suggest?

#9

Post by MichaelStubbs » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 3:13 PM UTC

I site with the static blog generator crowd. I've not heard of anything that would meet all of your requirements but my favourite static blog generator, Pelican, would come pretty close.

http://blog.getpelican.com/

Re: Dear HN — if php blogging platforms are junk, what do you suggest?

#10

Post by bliti » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 4:15 PM UTC

I don't see what the deals with not using WP is. Its proven, reliable, fairly secure, simple to install, and easy to extend via plug-ins. Who cares if it has some crappy PHP in it? It works, and gets the job done right.