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Really hard for non-techies; even a hosted WordPress isn't easy to use. I've been asked a few times 'I want to write online, what do I do?' and it's hard to fin

Really hard for non-techies; even a hosted WordPress isn't easy to use. I've been asked a few times 'I want to write online, what do I do?' and it's hard to find easy to use answers that don't involve vendor lock-in. Or me having to provide support forever. SSGs with plain text files are brilliant once you are set up, but it's a big hurdle getting there. Best I can do is try to find platforms with sane exit strategies.

azangru 4y ago
> Really hard for non-techies Yes; but it’s not like even that many techies host their own content. I love how Jeremy Keith copies everything he tweets to his own site [0]. Wanted to check how he set it all up; but his site isn’t open-sourced. [0] - https://adactio.com https://adactio.com
- al_borland 4y ago
  Looks like it's the other way around. He posts on his site and it syndicates to the other platforms. https://youtu.be/X3SrZuH00GQ?t=852 https://youtu.be/X3SrZuH00GQ?t=852
  - azangru 4y ago
    Even better! The true POSSE spirit!
3np 4y ago
May be worth considering: Lightweight ActivityPub writing platform, straightforward to self-host but there are also managed hosts: https://writefreely.org/ https://writefreely.org/
FalconSensei 4y ago
> SSGs with plain text files are brilliant once you are set up, but it's a big hurdle getting there. Even in that case, not nearly as practical, unless you mostly do long-form and only post from your computer. Even with SSG set up, having to be on the computer to create a draft, or make a quick correction, is really a bother. Also, when you own everything, you end up spending more time tinkering with it, which is not bad per se if you are having fun, but terrible if your goal is to actually post. Those 2 things - harder to post and easier to get sidetracked - explains why so many SSG'd blogs are made up of a few posts explaining why and how it was set up, and maybe a couple actual posts.
- NateEag 4y ago
  > Even with SSG set up, having to be on the computer to create a draft, or make a quick correction, is really a bother. I think you might be able to solve this with Syncthing and a watch process on your syncthing server. Commit and render on each change, and optionally sync if the rendered site is different from the previous version. ...granted, that's a really tech-nerd setup.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    How is running syncthing better than git or the site generator?
    - NateEag 4y ago
      Sorry, I was really vague there. If you run syncthing on your mobile device, you could make edits to a local copy of your plain-text content, and have those edits auto-committed/rendered/synced when they hit a computer housing the actual git repo. I personally despise typing on my smartphone because I'm so much slower on it and I'm much more error-prone this way, but I use something like this for managing my personal todo.txt file and it works pretty well.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    At that point you may as well use a real cms.
    - NateEag 4y ago
      I dunno. I have basically this working with my todo.txt file between my laptop and phone, and it's incredibly low-maintenance. Most CMSes mean running a complex app, a full DB engine, and having to stay on top of security updates for all that. Heaven help you if you run a CMS with a bunch of third-party extensions. For my static sites I have SSH and nginx. Nothing else needed. Static isn't always the answer, but where it does fit it's hard to beat for simplicity and efficiency.
  - benoliver999 4y ago
mission_failed 4y ago
Installing and managing anything computer related is so hard these days. Take programming for example. I started many years ago on C. I could literally copy a compiler executable out of an archive and it's ready to go. PHP was an apt install command. Want to use it on the web or with a database? A couple of more install commands. Guides were simple to follow, and they worked. I'm trying to install Python for my daughter, and f me it's like pulling teeth. The official installer is apparently the wrong way, you should use xyz package manager. The guides that people recommend just don't work, weird errors show up. Searching online leads to others with similar problems, but the always recommended guides are never updated. It's frustrating spending an hour fixing one error message, then another pops up. All I want is to install the damn thing. I've worked as a software engineer and as a documentation writer, and I struggle to deal with this stuff. Nothing just works, even a simple website now is a massiveness stack of stuff that breaks for weird reasons and is really hard to diagnose if you don't deal with it all the time. Right now I'm trying to set up Unity3d to build to iPhone... It's like researching an arcane magical spell. There seems to be no clear guide to how things are supposed to be set up. I'm now watching bloody YouTube videos on it, and despite following the exact same steps using the same software versions suddenly they have settings I don't, where did they come from who knows. It's never explained and you end up trawling through forums to find the nugget that explains exactly what thing you have to do.
- bionsystem 4y ago
  Python isn't a special case either, same issue with node, php/composer, R, and many others. I pretty much do this for a living now, it seems like most of my skillset is figuring out how things should run without making too much of a mess.
winternett 4y ago
Drupal has been solid. It needs a good developer who knows how to architect it properly so that it endures. Wordpress has been overrun by paid modules, which contradicts most of the benefits of it being open source. It also has had far too many security breakdowns. Paid modules are also now developed on Wordpress to break on updates, the eco-system at Wordpress needs serious attention.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I mean "just learn HTML and upload it" will always work, you can provide them with a simple template as well if needs be (e.g. http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ ), but they would also need to learn FTP or its equivalent built into their file browser. But I'd argue those are easier than wordpress itself. Plus, WP is quite invasive in that it will do its own updates, and most plugins try to push some paid services as well. I'm sure there's more minimalist WP alternatives though. What about a blogging platform that runs as a self-contained single page application (minimal) that gets its contents from text files? I'm sure it exists somewhere.
- benoliver999 4y ago
  I think there are SSG front-ends that are quite good. I find that writing in HTML is fiddly for regular blogging but I do agree it's a lower barrier to entry than it seems for simply writing a single page. When I show people my text-file SSG system, they love writing in markdown, they love that the site is 'portable', but they don't tend to want to get involved with the templating etc.

azangru 4y ago

> Really hard for non-techies Yes; but it’s not like even that many techies host their own content. I love how Jeremy Keith copies everything he tweets to his own site [0]. Wanted to check how he set it all up; but his site isn’t open-sourced. [0] - https://adactio.com https://adactio.com

al_borland 4y ago
Looks like it's the other way around. He posts on his site and it syndicates to the other platforms. https://youtu.be/X3SrZuH00GQ?t=852 https://youtu.be/X3SrZuH00GQ?t=852
- azangru 4y ago
  Even better! The true POSSE spirit!

3np 4y ago

May be worth considering: Lightweight ActivityPub writing platform, straightforward to self-host but there are also managed hosts: https://writefreely.org/ https://writefreely.org/

FalconSensei 4y ago

> SSGs with plain text files are brilliant once you are set up, but it's a big hurdle getting there. Even in that case, not nearly as practical, unless you mostly do long-form and only post from your computer. Even with SSG set up, having to be on the computer to create a draft, or make a quick correction, is really a bother. Also, when you own everything, you end up spending more time tinkering with it, which is not bad per se if you are having fun, but terrible if your goal is to actually post. Those 2 things - harder to post and easier to get sidetracked - explains why so many SSG'd blogs are made up of a few posts explaining why and how it was set up, and maybe a couple actual posts.

NateEag 4y ago
> Even with SSG set up, having to be on the computer to create a draft, or make a quick correction, is really a bother. I think you might be able to solve this with Syncthing and a watch process on your syncthing server. Commit and render on each change, and optionally sync if the rendered site is different from the previous version. ...granted, that's a really tech-nerd setup.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  How is running syncthing better than git or the site generator?
  - NateEag 4y ago
    Sorry, I was really vague there. If you run syncthing on your mobile device, you could make edits to a local copy of your plain-text content, and have those edits auto-committed/rendered/synced when they hit a computer housing the actual git repo. I personally despise typing on my smartphone because I'm so much slower on it and I'm much more error-prone this way, but I use something like this for managing my personal todo.txt file and it works pretty well.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  At that point you may as well use a real cms.
  - NateEag 4y ago
    I dunno. I have basically this working with my todo.txt file between my laptop and phone, and it's incredibly low-maintenance. Most CMSes mean running a complex app, a full DB engine, and having to stay on top of security updates for all that. Heaven help you if you run a CMS with a bunch of third-party extensions. For my static sites I have SSH and nginx. Nothing else needed. Static isn't always the answer, but where it does fit it's hard to beat for simplicity and efficiency.
- benoliver999 4y ago

mission_failed 4y ago

Installing and managing anything computer related is so hard these days. Take programming for example. I started many years ago on C. I could literally copy a compiler executable out of an archive and it's ready to go. PHP was an apt install command. Want to use it on the web or with a database? A couple of more install commands. Guides were simple to follow, and they worked. I'm trying to install Python for my daughter, and f me it's like pulling teeth. The official installer is apparently the wrong way, you should use xyz package manager. The guides that people recommend just don't work, weird errors show up. Searching online leads to others with similar problems, but the always recommended guides are never updated. It's frustrating spending an hour fixing one error message, then another pops up. All I want is to install the damn thing. I've worked as a software engineer and as a documentation writer, and I struggle to deal with this stuff. Nothing just works, even a simple website now is a massiveness stack of stuff that breaks for weird reasons and is really hard to diagnose if you don't deal with it all the time. Right now I'm trying to set up Unity3d to build to iPhone... It's like researching an arcane magical spell. There seems to be no clear guide to how things are supposed to be set up. I'm now watching bloody YouTube videos on it, and despite following the exact same steps using the same software versions suddenly they have settings I don't, where did they come from who knows. It's never explained and you end up trawling through forums to find the nugget that explains exactly what thing you have to do.

bionsystem 4y ago
Python isn't a special case either, same issue with node, php/composer, R, and many others. I pretty much do this for a living now, it seems like most of my skillset is figuring out how things should run without making too much of a mess.

winternett 4y ago

Drupal has been solid. It needs a good developer who knows how to architect it properly so that it endures. Wordpress has been overrun by paid modules, which contradicts most of the benefits of it being open source. It also has had far too many security breakdowns. Paid modules are also now developed on Wordpress to break on updates, the eco-system at Wordpress needs serious attention.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

I mean "just learn HTML and upload it" will always work, you can provide them with a simple template as well if needs be (e.g. http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ ), but they would also need to learn FTP or its equivalent built into their file browser. But I'd argue those are easier than wordpress itself. Plus, WP is quite invasive in that it will do its own updates, and most plugins try to push some paid services as well. I'm sure there's more minimalist WP alternatives though. What about a blogging platform that runs as a self-contained single page application (minimal) that gets its contents from text files? I'm sure it exists somewhere.

benoliver999 4y ago
I think there are SSG front-ends that are quite good. I find that writing in HTML is fiddly for regular blogging but I do agree it's a lower barrier to entry than it seems for simply writing a single page. When I show people my text-file SSG system, they love writing in markdown, they love that the site is 'portable', but they don't tend to want to get involved with the templating etc.