Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#1

Post by rishikeshs » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 10:37 AM UTC

I've been running my personal blog for a while using WordPress, but I find it too buggy and loads slow.

I was thinking of redesigning and redeveloping my blog into a light static website. What are some alternatives to Wordpress that are fast and small? I don't really need a CMS as I write all my blog posts in markdown. I'm currently thinking of using Hugo or use some framework like Skeleton. Any other suggestions?

My current site: https://rishikeshs.com/

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#2

Post by pxllh » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 10:43 AM UTC

I really like 11ty for this sort of thing.

It uses nunjucks templating but the starter is enough to just build a blog and add your own css.

Works with most hosts as it has a build script you can run and serve the output folder.

https://www.11ty.dev/

Edit: typo (css, not cms)

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#3

Post by dusted » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 10:44 AM UTC

I write my blog in plain text files (because it's primarily intended for gopher), and then wrote a little node+express service that watches those text-files and applies a bit of regex to it to make links be links, and otherwise just formats it as html. Here's how it looks

http://dusted.dk/pages/phlog/2021-12-14.txt and http://dusted.dk/pages/phlog/2021-12-14.txt?raw

to inline an image, i just refer to the name, so lol.png becomes an in the html.

My main compromise is that if it makes the plaintext less pretty, it can't go in, no tags.

My inline code blocks is made by matching for a language or file name ending with: and if the next line is indented, it is considered code.

Look at http://dusted.dk/pages/phlog/2019-12-20.txt and the raw text http://dusted.dk/pages/phlog/2019-12-20.txt?raw

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#4

Post by lloydatkinson » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 10:45 AM UTC

I used Astro with markdown files, with some Vue components for interactivity and search.

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#5

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 10:45 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#6

Post by jabej » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 10:45 AM UTC

If you find it too slow you may want to try a cache plugin. I think automattic (the creators of Wordpress) have one.

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#7

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 10:47 AM UTC

This is one of those things where it's almost quicker to write a new SSG than to search through the thousands that are already out there. Depends which language(s) you prefer and are most comfortable with.

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#8

Post by krapp » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 10:52 AM UTC

I use Lektor and publish by Git[0], or at least I would if I ever updated my blog.

Any static blog framework is probably adequate, though.

[0]https://neurobin.org/docs/web/using-git-to-manage-a-website

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#9

Post by nikivi » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 10:55 AM UTC

I am evaluating these options now:

- https://github.com/alaq/adrien.sh for NextJS

- https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit or Svelte

- https://github.com/SimeonGriggs/simeonGriggs for Remix

All have designs I like. I am only familiar with NextJS and find it a pleasure to work with.

Re: Ask HN: How to build a light weight personal blog?

#10

Post by frankwiles » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 10:56 AM UTC

I rebuilt my personal site using Hugo a couple years ago and it’s been great. Super easy to write new posts in Markdown, flexible enough I could do anything I might need, but easy enough to build out just the features I need and no pressure to update anything for security reasons.