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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

#221

Post by lagniappe »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #58
lagniappe wrote: post #13

Shameless plug but I built a tiny unopinionated static site generator that is great for blogs. No toolchain or anything fancy, I just added RSS support too :) It would be my pleasure if someone wants to try it https://github.com/donuts-are-good/bearclaw

Just gave it a (very) quick look > a static site is a site with no fancy clicky things, signups, comments, just plain html Technically I think you can have comments via some embedded widget. Each page is still static, but there's a script tag in there that embeds a widget into the page that gives you commenting, usually via some SaaS I think Disqus was the big one for a while. There was one I saw recently that uses g…

I have now added plugin support. This week I will write some sample plugins and then make a gallery for people to see them. Thanks for the inspiration!

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#222

Post by fmajid »

meto wrote: post #198
fmajid wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hugo and Cloudflare Pages is basically free, but you need to find somewhere to host your search.

I use Astro SSG and Cloudflare Pages. I use https://github.com/cloudcannon/pagefind for search on my Astro setup. You can test the search functionality here https://tinyrocket.pages.dev/ . From its repo: "Pagefind runs after any static site generator and automatically indexes the built static files. Pagefind then outputs a static search bundle to your website, and exposes a JavaScript search API that can be used anyw…

I don’t want to force JavaScript onto my users and wrote my own full-text search for Hugo that is skinned with your Hugo theme for a seamless look (only the URL changes):

https://GitHub.com/fazalmajid/fts5index

Demo: use the search sidebar on blog.majid.info.

But yes, what you describe is how search works on Sphinx-generated documentation sites and is quite impressive technology even before WASM.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#223

Post by voytec »

flangola7 wrote: post #181
voytec wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd advise against using "exotic" TLDs if you plan to send mail from this domain.

Define exotic? The large company I work for uses .systems

.systems wasn't one of the most affordable new gTLDs used for spamming but a lot of mail sites blocked or at least increased "SPAM score" for most if not all new gTLDs.

With .systems I would expect somewhat reduced inbox deliverability but with .icu, .xyz, .top, .live and similar, you can forget about egress email.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#225

Post by fleddr »

anothernewdude wrote: post #175
fleddr wrote: post #157

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 supp…

Medium is such a poor blogging platform that you need every post rehosted on archive sites so people can actually read them.

What does that even mean?

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#226

Post by fleddr »

pyrolistical wrote: post #169
fleddr wrote: post #157

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 supp…

Medium is now dead to me because it prevents the very one thing blogsites must do. Publish the damn blog! The mandatory (unless are able to join their program to opt-out) paywall reduces the number of people who can even see your blog

The paywall is a writer option, indeed one can opt-out.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#227

Post by baobabKoodaa »

malodyets wrote: post #126
ravagat wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not pretty, but it's zero maintenance. I've been doing that for 10 years now, and I don't think I'd ever go back to a third-party dependency. SSG is third-party dependency in one way.

It seems to me that a text editor is the same sort of dependency as a static site generator. Especially if you store the resulting site as rendered.

Comparing the complexity of operating and maintaining a SSG to using a simple text editor is just about the most HN comment I've ever read. My blog is written with Gatsby (which I use as a SSG), and about once per year I have to dedicate and entire weekend to troubleshoot because I can no longer run the SSG due to changes in the Node/npm ecosystem. There is absolutely no corollary to using a text editor. Literally nobody will have to spend a weekend figuring out "what do I have to do to get notepad to open a .html file with today's technology". Nobody! Notepad just opens the .html file, just like it opened the same file a year ago, or 10 years ago. No need to burn weekends over opening a file!

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#228

Post by tobiasbischoff »

Blogging advice from the guy who choose a platform thats about to shut down for his own blog, thats my kind of humor. Just kidding, the actual post is fine but hosting a blog seems to be either a) running a vps incl managing all its updates and security b) trusting a service not to shut down in the next years to come. That sucks.

Re: How to Start Your Blog in 2023

#230

Post by quickthrower2 »

jdougan wrote: post #220
quickthrower2 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reading it again I think his point is that the generated HTML is good enough to spring further work even if you lose the original tool. I can agree with that.

With wordpress you could export it to HTML as a backup but it is an extra step.

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