Ask HN: How to Decide on a Blogging Platform?

3 points·saimiam··6 comments

There are just so many choices. How does on go about picking one? Do we self host? Subdomain or on a path? What should I be thinking through to make the best choice for me?

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Who is the blog for? What is the goal? Who will dev/maintain it? Do you have any special needs?

9 out of 10 I would suggest a lightweight WordPress installation that's heavily automated wrt to maintenance. If you have the money for it, go with WP Engine or Kinsta. They take care of most major issues so you can focus on the content.

My blog is in support of my projects. I really want to put my content on domain.com/blog. Does WP lend itself to that? I don’t want to self-host it because everything else I’m working on is serverless so setting up a server just for the blog seems foolish.

sounds like GitHub Pages would be a good match for you then

Sorry, can you elaborate? Will I have to host my entire project on GitHub pages so that I can also have my blog there? Also, I’ve only seen very basic themes for GitHub pages which don’t at all match the rest of the website. Does gh allow custom themes?

The github pages site can be set up to just contain your blog pages, and that is how they are usually set up. Custom themes are probably supported, it really depends on how much time you are willing to put in on customizing it to your interests.

I use GitLab pages... Generally you can look at software like Jekyll, or GoHugo - the second one I use on GitLab for my private blog. These software generates a static files with articles for your blog. If you want comments u can use 3rd party services like disqus.

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