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Comment by mbeex | Hacker News Reader

I have been looking for a blogging environment for this kind of topics for some time. So, my question to the author:

What kind of software / tools /styles are behind this blog in the technical sense? I see mathjax, probably some static site generator(?), what else are you using?

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Also not the author, but if you want minimum hassle and don't care most of the blog-like features, you can:

- Write in Markdown using your favorite editor (I like Typora[1]; StackEdit[2] is also great)

- Render them in-browser with Docsify[3] (so that you don't even need to worry about setting up a separate build step)

- Deploy to GitHub pages or GitLab pages for free

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[1] https://typora.io/

[2] https://stackedit.io/

[3] https://docsify.js.org/

Not the author, but IMO the form should follow the content. So I would write the content first (e.g. in text or Markdown) and then if people read it, improve the formatting.

FWIW I wrote my own scripts to generate static HTML over 3 years, but people were reading it from the first day. So it was just gradually improved over time, Unix style. (It even works on mobile now, after I learned how to do that in the last week :) )

http://www.oilshell.org/site.html

If I can give my 2 cents, think about how you would like to write and publish, and where do you want to focus. I've tried to use static site generators (mostly Hugo), but in the end, I've realized that I spent way more time making little tweaks to my theme, creating short codes "to help me create content", than actually writing.

Now, I plan on just having a blog to myself, to post what I've been reading, with some highlights/notes, and for that, a free wordpress.com is way better than anything else, as it's very easy to add different types of media/embed content without a worry, and to use their android app to write on the go if I want.

So really, whatever you use, first decide on your ideal workflow, and then find the solutions :)

I didn't want to make the post overly long by adding a section on "failure modes," but certainly one of them is: spend a long time building and tweaking a blog rather than writing. I've done this too and work to avoid it.

I write drafts in Markdown + MathJax and then build everything into a static site using Jekyll. I didn't use a theme or template, since I found most were too noisy. It's just custom HTML/CSS.

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