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Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?

robertnealan.com

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Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?

#191

Post by fenomas »

PuffinBlue wrote: post #180
fenomas wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Behind the scenes it's just running the usual packages for templates, markdown, minification etc., so for a fresh build it's about as fast as any typical grunt-based setup. But AFAICT it correctly detects when things don't need to be regenerated, so incremental builds are quite fast no matter what, unless you're editing templates. I recently converted my wordpress blog to hexo and blogged about it, if you're interest…

I like the full width code blocks you have in your design. Your site looks great, and all the better to know it's static!

Thanks very much! Yeah, there's a kind of peace of mind that comes from knowing there are no updates pending, SQL server to configure, etc.

The other nice thing about SSGs is emitting modern output (minified, etc). What comes out of wordpress is a horror show...

Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?

#192

Post by moepstar »

akerro wrote: post #141
squeakynick wrote: post #123

I'm embarrassed to say that I still hand write my blog directly in HTML using Notepad++ and manually FTP changes to the hosting company. Most of my blog is static HMTL, with a smidgen of script for analytics or occasional interaction. Every now and then I'll use some light PHP (typically when I need interaction with a database on the server).

I'm going to do the same. I modified a wordpress theme to fit better my needs, after an update all my changes were gone (I had a backup ofc), but it's irritating that I have to patch my theme after every update. I'm going to create a few scripts that will host my blog on gitlab and post it automatically on my server. Static pages are the future.

This is most probably because you've done it wrong ;)

WordPress has a concept called "child [1] which shouldn't result in behavior like that.

[1] https://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?

#193

Post by dba7dba »

KhalilK wrote: post #137
dba7dba wrote: post #121

My observation is that about 90% of the Wordpress sites out there don't need Wordpress. All they really need is html/css.

This! They are so boated and for no reason whatsoever.

The bloat caused by even a bare minimum WP site versus html/css is breathtaking.

Let's say you need to put up a simple brochure type site. You can do alot wih just 2-3 MB text/pics. With WP, it takes about 10MB just to get it running.

And let's not forget the DB backend of WP. This alone vastly increases complexity, at least for average users.

Scale this up and you see how bloated WP is. You want to put up 100 brochure sites (each about 5MB). With html/css sites, that translates to what 500MB of data? With WP, that already is 1000MB. And add requirement for a DB backend for 100 websites. The bloatness jumped by at least a factor of 2 with just the requirement for more storage. With DB requirement, the bloatness jumped imo by a factor of 5 or so.

Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?

#194

Post by akerro »

moepstar wrote: post #192
akerro wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to do the same. I modified a wordpress theme to fit better my needs, after an update all my changes were gone (I had a backup ofc), but it's irritating that I have to patch my theme after every update. I'm going to create a few scripts that will host my blog on gitlab and post it automatically on my server. Static pages are the future.

This is most probably because you've done it wrong ;) WordPress has a concept called "child [1] which shouldn't result in behavior like that. [1] https://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

Thing is, I never wrote any php code and I have no idea about CSS. My modification included only removing existing code which I didn't like.

Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?

#195

Post by 0xCMP »

asteadman wrote: post #117
sleepyhead wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Static site generators are not a good answer for non-engineers, especially if customizations are necessary." Could be. Content and templates could be hosted on S3. Unfortunately I haven't found a good admin GUI for a static site generator yet. I use Jekyll myself and as a developer that's great, not something I would recommend to normal users though. Which is a shame because most users (or small businesses) don't re…

I like the idea of Jekyll, but I don't like Jekyll itself (I'm pretty sure I have a severe allergic reaction to Ruby). Something I have yet to see but that I think would be perfect would be a client-side single-page-app that served as a s3-backed static site generator. Navigate to MyStaticWebsiteGenerator.io (or download it, or self-host it, or clone the repo, it's a simple js-based SPA preferably packaged as a stand…

Would be interesting if the admin supported S3 or Dropbox as the sources and then generated the site to be at S3.

Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?

#196

Post by therealidiot »

For those who aren't scared of using Git with their blog, there's fugitive.

It's a few {pre,post}-{commit,receive} hooks which generate a static html blog from html articles (though you can configure it with an external parser iirc, so it shouldn't be hard to get Markdown support.) It probably wouldn't suffice for many use cases, but for simple blogs it might be enough.

https://gitorious.org/fugitive/fugitive

Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?

#197

Post by EvanPlaice »

Lots of comments are covering how Wordpress is a maintenance hassle, static sites require a programmer to update.

What about a 3rd option?

Use a web application that can asynchronously fetch markdown files and render them client-side.

That's basically how my site I've been working functions.

http://evanplaice.com

Here's the code Http://gihub.com/evanplaice/evanplaice.com

I haven't fleshed out the journal section yet but the majority of the rest of the site is all markdown driven with a clean separation between application. It's also hosted on S3.

In theory, I could change the content directly to be loaded on Dropbox, although it would be preferable to provide inline caching of requests. For example use AWS lambda to frequently check for updates.

Eventually, when it's ready, I plan to extract the journaling portion and release it as a server-less journaling platform.

Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?

#198

Post by EvanPlaice »

squeakynick wrote: post #123

I'm embarrassed to say that I still hand write my blog directly in HTML using Notepad++ and manually FTP changes to the hosting company. Most of my blog is static HMTL, with a smidgen of script for analytics or occasional interaction. Every now and then I'll use some light PHP (typically when I need interaction with a database on the server).

Madness!

J/k. But if you are familiar with NPM, install node-ftpsync.

Configuration is really easy. Just one small json file at the root of your site.

One command and your local files are automagically synced. It does file diff checking so it'll only upload the files that have changed.

I originally wrote it because inherited a site located on shared hosting. I got really tired of the cognitive overhead of manually uploading changes via FileZilla then checking, rechecking, and praying that I didn't forget something.

Re: Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?

#199

Post by Andrex »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #9

I used Ghost for over a year. I was relatively happy with it. I recently switched to Medium and couldn't be happier. With Ghost I was spending more time tweaking and maintaining purchased themes than I spent writing. It's really really really fucking hard to run a blog that works well on desktop/tablet/phone and doesn't crash if you get a traffic spike. How many self hosted blogs can handle 500,000 hits in less than…

Those Smash articles were a welcome surprise! Follow'd. :)

I love "owning" my content on my server (since '09) but in the past year I've been thinking of going back to a "serviced" solution. My initial thought was WordPress.com since I run WP, but it's $99 a year! It decreases the hassle of upgrading versions constantly, but still, that's a dealbreaker.

What's attractive about Medium is the same thing that attracted me to Facebook: all profiles/posts use the same theme, and that theme is pretty good. In addition, following people to get their content in your feed feels great.

However, I'm not sure if I'm completely ready to give up control yet. Will probably continue to check into Medium + custom URLs for the next year.

The decision would be much easier if my posts were written for a large audience, but they're mostly just self-involved journal entries I doubt people want to go back and read. :) Right now I just publish short fiction to Medium, which is what I want people to share, like, etc.

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