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Comment by Mediterraneo10 | Hacker News Reader

I agree that individual blogs that emit an RSS feed to follow are a great thing. However, most bloggers don’t really have the skills to host their own blog on a dedicated server. So, even if they did avoid Tumblr, they would be relying on another such hosting service like Blogspot or Wordpress.com.

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You can use a static site generator and drag-and-drop the build directory into Netlify (or deploy with Git). Hosting is free, including using a custom domain and SSL.

https://www.staticgen.com/

https://netlify.com/

It isn't that hard to install a blog on a shared hosting plan or VPS somewhere. Just find something with CPanel and some sort of auto installer (I think it was called Fantastico or something) and Bob's your uncle.

Don't even need to know how FTP works or how to code anything to do that...

And who maintains that when something inevitably goes wrong?

You yourself :) WordPress isn't that hard to administer/maintain.

No, your right. It is just one of the biggest targets for hackers, and has a litany of vulnerabilities that grows daily.

If playing an endless game of whack-a-mole trying to keep up with the a constant stream of vulnerabilities seems fun, then sure.

Personally I wouldn't touch WordPress with a 10-foot pole. I would consider something like Ghost instead.

https://ghost.org/developers/

Or https://wp.com/ for a simple, hosted version of WordPress.

CPanel can do nightly backups. If something goes wrong, roll back a day or 3 and try again.

I've been using this method since WP was first added to Fantastico, way back in the day. A form of lazy versioning I guess.

We're not talking about companies who need high availability. Your personal blog can handle a day down while you restore from backup (it's just a few clicks from the CPanel, the wait for the email saying it's ready).

Plenty of people on social media/blogosphere who have no idea how to do even that. Just because "it isn't that hard" doesn't mean the barrier to entry isn't incredibly high.

It's also not free, and people are getting pretty used to free.

http://getpoole.com/ ?

If you're a HN regular, you can probably build a site using GitHub Pages. I'm just not sure about the Facebook-using public...

I meant a webhost or VPS isn't free. And yes, that was directed more towards the general populace using services which are currently free, such as Tumblr and other blog platforms.

That‘s how you get millions of badly maintained WP instances spreading malware. No, thanks...

>It isn't that hard to install a blog on a shared hosting plan or VPS somewhere. Just find something with CPanel and some sort of auto installer (I think it was called Fantastico or something) and Bob's your uncle.

That's already above the 'interested enough to do it' threshold of 99% of the population

Thats how I always used to host my blog. Free ad-free php, cPanel, Fantastico. But it was always a nightmare, hacker exploits a bug in WordPress, upgrade WP, then the free host changes policy & now one or other feature is broken.

Its easy to install, but its not easy to keep up & maintain the VPS WP installation for an average user like me.

Last year I came across GitLab pages & jekyll; & now its easy to maintain. Yes, not easy to start.

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