Ask HN: What platform are you building a niche site on in 2023?

#1

Post by joshdance » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 3:15 PM UTC

If you wanted to create a niche site (articles monetize with ads or affiliate links) what platform are you building it on in 2023?

Wordpress is probably the default.

Webflow is new but their blogging interface is frankly bad.

Ghost is an option but has less plugins that Wordpress.

What would you choose?

One wrinkle is that we want to include custom coded pages (calculators, interactive examples) as well. Any CMS systems play well easily with custom code?

Re: Ask HN: What platform are you building a niche site on in 2023?

#2

Post by Comevius » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

Astro + Cloudflare Pages is pretty good. You can start with just a static site, fetch content from anywhere, including Markdown files or an API, and you can provide interactivity in islands.

https://astro.build/

Re: Ask HN: What platform are you building a niche site on in 2023?

#3

Post by Vibgyor5 » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

Actually, can anyone identify what platform/theme this website is built on? https://www.jeffsu.org/ This is a content creator on YouTube+Google PMM, love their website format

Re: Ask HN: What platform are you building a niche site on in 2023?

#4

Post by liveware » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

Vibgyor5 wrote: post #3

Actually, can anyone identify what platform/theme this website is built on? https://www.jeffsu.org/ This is a content creator on YouTube+Google PMM, love their website format

The source code mentions Ghost [https://ghost.org/].

Re: Ask HN: What platform are you building a niche site on in 2023?

#5

Post by coding123 » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

I don't consider wordpress plugins a value. The more plugins you install, the higher the attack surface and less tested your overall setup is.

I am a developer with 30 years of experience. I installed a WP site for my wife with some plugins and themes. Within a few days I had tons of porn and 100 megabyte files being dumped on the server. I tried cleaning it up a ton of times, and looked for whatever plugin or script was being exploited.

After a few more days Google flagged it for being compromised, so I erased the server off amazon after some content backups, created a new server and deployed a Docker image with static content. Then I wrote to google saying I have deployed something that is impossible to hack: A static site being deployed in Docker so the host is not compromise-able. Google cleared the flag the next day.

Re: Ask HN: What platform are you building a niche site on in 2023?

#6

Post by PKop » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

Vibgyor5 wrote: post #3

Actually, can anyone identify what platform/theme this website is built on? https://www.jeffsu.org/ This is a content creator on YouTube+Google PMM, love their website format

https://builtwith.com/jeffsu.org

Re: Ask HN: What platform are you building a niche site on in 2023?

#7

Post by Vibgyor5 » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

PKop wrote: post #6

Vibgyor5 wrote: post #3

Actually, can anyone identify what platform/theme this website is built on? https://www.jeffsu.org/ This is a content creator on YouTube+Google PMM, love their website format

https://builtwith.com/jeffsu.org

What an handy resource! Thanks

Re: Ask HN: What platform are you building a niche site on in 2023?

#8

Post by paxys » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

Static site generators + free/cheap static hosting (usually bundling CDN, edge hosting, custom domains, TLS, SSR, functions, auth and more by default) are getting more and more attractive by the day, and IMO they are mature enough now to cover most web hosting use cases.

For building – Next.js, Hugo, Gatsby, Jekyll/Octopress, Gridsome, Hexo, Astro, Eleventy

For hosting – Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, Github Pages, Render, Firebase, S3

Re: Ask HN: What platform are you building a niche site on in 2023?

#9

Post by is0tope » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

For my blog, Hugo + Netlify. It's free, simple to use and works well.

Re: Ask HN: What platform are you building a niche site on in 2023?

#10

Post by thedangler » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 6:57 PM UTC

For custom dev I use Laravel + livewire + postgresql And I'm starting to use Elixir with LiveView in Phoenix more too.

For fast websites that need no code I use https://sytscope.com I've used it to build websites and funnels

It has almost all features anyone could need: Drag and drop interface, Lots of widgets, Funnels + A/B Testing, Pre made templates, Blocks, Blogging, Membership areas that can be subscribed to, e-commerce - (digital, recurring or physical products), Email Automation and Campaigns, Simple integrations.

Its inexpensive and its only priced in CAD so USD saves like 30% lol

Good luck hunting.