Ask HN: Which blogging platform do you use? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Which blogging platform do you use?

9 pointsrajeshmr42 comments

Dear HN Community,

I am curious to know which blogging platform you use ? Is it paid or free ? Do you self-host ? What is the running costs in case you self-host and what sort of limitations are there to using a platform vs self-hosting ?

Thanks for your inputs!

Cheers!

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Self hosted here.

I migrated from Wordpress to Middleman for my blog [0], but wanted to have a web UI for writing and editing blog posts so I wrote my own [1]. Here's a screenshot [2].

I also didn't want to lose all the comment history so I wrote another gem [3] for Disqus-like comments, which are loaded via AJAX given that the website is completely static.

I haven't gotten around documenting the gems but hope to do sometime this month!

[0] http://bootlog.org [1] https://rubygems.org/gems/artifact [2] https://twitter.com/tomaspollak/status/753728789679529985 [3] https://rubygems.org/gems/cachai

Awesome! :)

Maybe because I'm so used to reading in english and portuguese, when I see phrases in languages that I'm not as familiar, I find them beautiful (like a melody, say).

Like this one from your blog: "Y ahí empezaba la magia y los sonidos galáticos del módem."

Hehe, that's a good one. In english it would go like this: "And that's when the magic would start with the modem's galatic sounds."

For my site [0], I use a custom static site generator that I wrote myself in rust. [1] (Because you know what the world really needed more than anything else? Yeah, yet another static site generator.) It's super basic right now, but it does the job.

Since it's a fully static site, I have Nginx serving it directly on a $5/mo DO server, along with a bunch of other crap. Static sites are great because they need almost nothing from a server for hosting.

Also, the site style is heavily inspired by [2].

[0] https://psbarrett.com/ [1] https://github.com/azdle/virgil [2] http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

I considered DO $5/month and then also considered posthaven which costs the same minus the hassles of maintaining and monitoring your own server.. just trying to explore and discover how the community maintains their blogs :-)

For me it came down to the fact that having a real VPS lets me host all my other projects on there too for the same price, and I'm a cheap bastard. I've got 19 different domains (including subdomains) hosting different things on that one VPS. None of them have an significant traffic to speak of and none of them make money, so having them all on the same server is the only way that I could reasonably afford to host them all.

Fair enough:) Hey we all would like to experiment on low budgets and sure $5 VPS can do wonders for all the experiments and projects.

Btw, I liked your blog - it's bare to essentials.. I tend to like such minimalistic approach. :)

Thanks!

I use Jekyll (https://jekyllrb.com/) which generates static html pages from templates and your blog posts written in markdown. The advantage of this is that I can put my entire blog in git. Also there is no database needed, which makes hosting much easier.

I generate the static html and then put them inside a docker container to deploy. The host is a bare metal server (not free but cheap) with docker installed.

Both of these blogs use Jekyll + Docker as described above:

- http://blog.nimbleci.com/

- http://blog.emmetogrady.com/

I use middleman[1]. There is a blog plugin which is very handy.

I used to use github for hosting but I wanted to have SSL so I moved the blog to my UPS.

1: https://middlemanapp.com/

Thanks!

Just curious to hear if you tried GitHub Pages as a Jekyll host first and if something missing there led you to self-host.

I tried GitHub pages, I found 2 issues :

1) the ease of publishing on various platforms is a limitation.

2) the load time of the website is high.

Thanks, I ll check the links and update.

Thanks, I ll check the links.

Does Jekyll support including Disqus comments?

Ghost, self-hosted, the software is free and I pay $5/month for the small DO box.

The platforms (Wordpress.com, Ghost(Pro), Blogger, etc) will probably handle massive spikes better. With something like CloudFlare, I think you can mitigate a lot of that though.

I've also been happy with Tumblr in the past — there's no self-hosted version available, but hosted is free. I like Ghost's writing tools better, but Tumblr's media tools are far more full featured and battle tested from years of tons of users.

Currently, Tumblr seems like a good option. But it's limited by its approach to blogging. It separates out text, images, videos, quotes and links. I find that approach quite limiting as when we write we tend to mix and match all those formats.

Also, I found it limiting to publishing code in Tumblr.

Slightly unrelated, you IMHO should always use a solution where you can use your own domain name, so you can rescue your content to your own server or another provider and keep your links alive (in case a service is shutting down, your preferences change, ...)

I personally run a DIY-thing, but that's not because I necessarily think that is a good idea ;) If I weren't using that I'd either use a static site generator of some kind or pay for Wordpress.com.

Thanks for the suggestion! Now i know why i should use my own domain name.:)

I use wordpress, I actually have 4 of them on the same server. Yes, I selfhost.

edit: cost me ~20 USD a month for the managed server.

I use one that I wrote from scratch with Flask. I love the simplicity of both its code & UI. Recently added an admin panel so I can even edit posts while commuting. It's hosted on a 5$/month Vultr VPS. Had lot of fun trying to make it "secure".

In my case the big inconvenience is that I spend more time developing/improving it than actually writing articles.

Sure, it would be interesting to write from scratch :) I contemplated writing a bare minimum blog from scratch.. now i should just try developing it.

I was only wary about using existing tools like ghost, WP etc since it involves setup, updates and configurations and the learning is pretty minimal - didn't think the ROI was high.

If "self-hosting" means "web hosting" these days, then my blog/portfolio site [1] is on a regular web hosting ($45/year, got a few other sites there as well), and runs on the code i wrote myself (PHP, no DB).

It took a few years (about a decade, really) to get the design right - people's perception is a weird thing, what looks nice to me is an abomination to most, and i usually got about one piece of feedback per year.

That's probably the biggest argument i can give against going DIY with web design.

I've had a few game servers self-hosted (in the "PC-under-the-table" sense), and i would really advice to get a real hosting for such things - every time the internet is acting up or you try something that needs parts from the server box, someone would ping you on Skype about why the server is down. :/)

[1] http://orbides.org

I use my own static site generator "minni" - https://github.com/jyotiska/minni. The UI used to be really basic, so I tweaked it a little in last couple of days. Here is the link to the blog - https://jyotiska.github.io/blog/

Hey looks interesting. I love the minimalism.

How about the page load times ?

Well, each blog post is under 30 kb without images. So page load is very fast. Speed is one of the main reason why I use my own static site generator. Since it is hosted on Github Pages, it depends on how fast Github can deliver the page :)

https://medium.com/free-stuff

I'm using Medium, it has limited features, but it's the best out there if you're just looking for something simple. Quality of posts in Medium as a community is better than MOST blogging platforms out there.

I use WordPress on a shared server at A2 Hosting. It's about ten bucks a month and it does everything I need. I recently installed wp-cli so I can make and edit posts from the command line so I can write in pure markdown without getting into knock down fights with the built in editor about formatting.

Hosted Wordpress (with WP-Engine).

The ecosystem (primarily the number of really nice themes) and the fact I've been using it for years just means it's the simplest option.

I'd probably never self-host it again for anything important, though. Too much configuration / update / tweaking / security / etc / etc time.

Precisely! I was unsure if it was worth ur time to maintain all the config, updates etc. I felt the time could be wisely invested into learning or your other priorities in life.

https://medium.com/sound-shelter/

+ Instant access to Medium userbase.

+ Solid SEO as the site is spidered so much quicker than any blog I've ever had.

+ Nice layout and easy to read.

- I don't own the content.

- If Medium closes, so does my blog.

Isn't that the point of owning your blog ? Since you dont want to give up the ownership of your content ?

There is actually an option to Export all your posts

https://medium.com/me/export

I currently use Github Pages and Jekyll. I did this because it was free and dead simple. At some point I'm thinking about moving it over to Amazon S3 because its cheap, highly scalable, and a good excuse to try out Amazon S3.

I have recently switched to Hugo static site generator (from Octopress), deploy via GitLab CI, and host on S3.

Considered octopress too.. seems like a good option.

EDIT : Please share links to your blogs too.. it would be great to know your work!

I wrote my own from scratch.

Wow, I would be interested to have a discussion with you regarding ur setup.

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