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I used to blog. Many (9) years ago. I took a break (https://objology.blogspot.com/2012/05/stepping-out-of-balloon.html https://objology.blogspot.com/2012/05/ste

I used to blog. Many (9) years ago. I took a break (https://objology.blogspot.com/2012/05/stepping-out-of-balloon.html https://objology.blogspot.com/2012/05/stepping-out-of-balloo...). 9 years of polyglot-ism later, I've toyed with returning to some sort of small b blogging, just for the therapeutic nature of writing about what I learn and do. But I'm honestly at a loss where to do it. I don't really want to do the hosted-for-monetization thing again (Medium, BlogSpot, etc). I've looked at GitHub Pages/Jekyll, all the cool kids seem to be doing that? It seemed kind of complicated and end-runny. And it wasn't clear how much control I'd have over my future that way? What do other small b bloggers do now days to control their own destiny and keep things simple?

mtsolitary 5y ago
There is a really fantastic movement of people creating "digital gardens", collections of notes and ideas and posts that can be much less formal than a traditional blog. They're very fun to create, tinker with, and to explore. Check out mine here: https://mtsolitary.com https://mtsolitary.com as an example, or see this great curated list: https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners. There are some tools being created in this space but a lot of it is still roll-your-own. Github Pages and Jekyll (or even better, Hugo) is a good way to get started, there's plenty of simple tutorials that can get you a site up and running. And in terms of control over your future: everything in the end is just Markdown files that you can pick up and take with you wherever you go :)
ManuelKiessling 5y ago
I have a very oldschool "FTP webspace" with Ionos (from 1&1) - it's really just your run-of-the-mill static website hosting package, basically unchanged since the late nineties. Well, it surely changed a lot under the hood from the provider's perspective, I assume, but from the user's perspective, it works as it has always worked: you have a domain, you have an (S)FTP account, you upload your static HTML/CSS files, et voilá, you have a homepage/blog. I create my HTML/CSS locally using Hugo. The source for my homepage and its blog posts can be seen at https://github.com/manuelkiessling/manuel.kiessling.net https://github.com/manuelkiessling/manuel.kiessling.net. Super simple, no headaches, no downtimes, really fast end user experience when browsing the resulting homepage. Less than 4 bucks per month. I do depend on Ionos, of course, but as it's only HTML and CSS, it would work with every web site hosting solution on the planet. I also depend on Hugo, of course, but Hugo is open source, and I've even stored the Hugo binaries for different platforms locally. My homepage is at https://manuel.kiessling.net/ https://manuel.kiessling.net/.
lelanthran 5y ago
> What do other small b bloggers do now days to control their own destiny and keep things simple? Self-hosting! Coincidentally, last week I decided that I shall update my self-hosted blog at least once a month (had written two posts over the course of five years). So I grabbed the content, put it into Org mode files, stored in git, exported the html (also stored in git) and uploaded the result to my cheapie web-host. http://www.lelanthran.com http://www.lelanthran.com I'm quite pleased with the result - I can easily move this at some point to my DO droplet, which will happen probably this year (sometime). In the meantime, I'm just gonna write down my opinions of the world and call it a blog :-)
radiKal07 5y ago
I relate to your point regarding using platforms like Medium. I ran into the same problem when I wanted to start my own blog. I thought there has to be a better way to do it, having a static blog that is fast, using modern tech, don’t have to worry about hosting and use your own domain. This is why I created https://panakit.com https://panakit.com. Of course I am biased but I am trying to create a tool that solves all these problems and still gives you ownership.
krapht 5y ago
I tried all the different static site generators, and I was annoyed with how everything was really complicated. I also came to the realization that I was never going to need a content management system with the amount of blogging I was doing, so I should stop overanalyzing the problem and just do the minimum thing that leads to more writing. Then I decided to pretend I time-traveled back to the 90s - now I just write HTML, by hand, with a simple CSS style. If CSS was any more complicated, I would've just written pure text in HTML and decorated things with ascii art. You can host these trivially on GitHub, but back in the day I also used nearlyfreespeech.net to host my static websites. I don't know if they are still alive and kicking, but if so, would recommend. I've also realized that among my professional contacts, people are starting to blog technical articles on LinkedIn. I think that's probably a decent way to go as well if you want discoverability.
- executesorder66 5y ago
  > Then I decided to pretend I time-traveled back to the 90s - now I just write HTML, by hand, with a simple CSS style. I wanted to, and would prefer to, do my website (which is mostly a blog for now) like this. But I like having tags and categories for all my blog posts, and I don't like the tedium of doing _that_ by hand. I could write something to do that for me, but then I'd just end up with a static site generator anyway. In the end I just settled with hugo since it can do everything I need for now.
- type0 5y ago
  > I've also realized that among my professional contacts, people are starting to blog technical articles on LinkedIn. That's unexpected, wouldn't it be just drowned with self aggrandizing bs there?
truth_ 5y ago
Not really the case. You don't need to build a Jekyll blog from scratch. Really good and fully functional templates are floating around. Just fork something like Beautiful Jekyll or AcademicPages, and edit YAMLs, and .md's to get started. Really easy to do. I recently started to look into Cloudflare Pages. Worth a look.

mtsolitary 5y ago

There is a really fantastic movement of people creating "digital gardens", collections of notes and ideas and posts that can be much less formal than a traditional blog. They're very fun to create, tinker with, and to explore. Check out mine here: https://mtsolitary.com https://mtsolitary.com as an example, or see this great curated list: https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners. There are some tools being created in this space but a lot of it is still roll-your-own. Github Pages and Jekyll (or even better, Hugo) is a good way to get started, there's plenty of simple tutorials that can get you a site up and running. And in terms of control over your future: everything in the end is just Markdown files that you can pick up and take with you wherever you go :)

ManuelKiessling 5y ago

I have a very oldschool "FTP webspace" with Ionos (from 1&1) - it's really just your run-of-the-mill static website hosting package, basically unchanged since the late nineties. Well, it surely changed a lot under the hood from the provider's perspective, I assume, but from the user's perspective, it works as it has always worked: you have a domain, you have an (S)FTP account, you upload your static HTML/CSS files, et voilá, you have a homepage/blog. I create my HTML/CSS locally using Hugo. The source for my homepage and its blog posts can be seen at https://github.com/manuelkiessling/manuel.kiessling.net https://github.com/manuelkiessling/manuel.kiessling.net. Super simple, no headaches, no downtimes, really fast end user experience when browsing the resulting homepage. Less than 4 bucks per month. I do depend on Ionos, of course, but as it's only HTML and CSS, it would work with every web site hosting solution on the planet. I also depend on Hugo, of course, but Hugo is open source, and I've even stored the Hugo binaries for different platforms locally. My homepage is at https://manuel.kiessling.net/ https://manuel.kiessling.net/.

lelanthran 5y ago

> What do other small b bloggers do now days to control their own destiny and keep things simple? Self-hosting! Coincidentally, last week I decided that I shall update my self-hosted blog at least once a month (had written two posts over the course of five years). So I grabbed the content, put it into Org mode files, stored in git, exported the html (also stored in git) and uploaded the result to my cheapie web-host. http://www.lelanthran.com http://www.lelanthran.com I'm quite pleased with the result - I can easily move this at some point to my DO droplet, which will happen probably this year (sometime). In the meantime, I'm just gonna write down my opinions of the world and call it a blog :-)

radiKal07 5y ago

I relate to your point regarding using platforms like Medium. I ran into the same problem when I wanted to start my own blog. I thought there has to be a better way to do it, having a static blog that is fast, using modern tech, don’t have to worry about hosting and use your own domain. This is why I created https://panakit.com https://panakit.com. Of course I am biased but I am trying to create a tool that solves all these problems and still gives you ownership.

krapht 5y ago

I tried all the different static site generators, and I was annoyed with how everything was really complicated. I also came to the realization that I was never going to need a content management system with the amount of blogging I was doing, so I should stop overanalyzing the problem and just do the minimum thing that leads to more writing. Then I decided to pretend I time-traveled back to the 90s - now I just write HTML, by hand, with a simple CSS style. If CSS was any more complicated, I would've just written pure text in HTML and decorated things with ascii art. You can host these trivially on GitHub, but back in the day I also used nearlyfreespeech.net to host my static websites. I don't know if they are still alive and kicking, but if so, would recommend. I've also realized that among my professional contacts, people are starting to blog technical articles on LinkedIn. I think that's probably a decent way to go as well if you want discoverability.

executesorder66 5y ago
> Then I decided to pretend I time-traveled back to the 90s - now I just write HTML, by hand, with a simple CSS style. I wanted to, and would prefer to, do my website (which is mostly a blog for now) like this. But I like having tags and categories for all my blog posts, and I don't like the tedium of doing _that_ by hand. I could write something to do that for me, but then I'd just end up with a static site generator anyway. In the end I just settled with hugo since it can do everything I need for now.
type0 5y ago
> I've also realized that among my professional contacts, people are starting to blog technical articles on LinkedIn. That's unexpected, wouldn't it be just drowned with self aggrandizing bs there?

truth_ 5y ago

Not really the case. You don't need to build a Jekyll blog from scratch. Really good and fully functional templates are floating around. Just fork something like Beautiful Jekyll or AcademicPages, and edit YAMLs, and .md's to get started. Really easy to do. I recently started to look into Cloudflare Pages. Worth a look.