> I just write them in Notion, and then I copy-paste them into the Ghost editor
> every now and then I have to hack some CSS together to fix some bugs
> the theme can only be compiled with an ancient version of npm
> the code is really messy, so at some point I won’t be able to maintain it any longer
> images don’t work very well with my theme
To each their own, but to me this sounds like an absolutely terrible "website stack"
> So, all in all, I’m paying almost 400 euros per year to host a personal blog.
Seems...a bit much. But what do I know? I've just been using Jekyll since 2013. For a long time now Github has had first-class support for Jekyll and so I haven't even had to mess with Ruby for many years now, I usually just edit it online in the Github UI. I pay $0 a year for this service so my only cost is DNS.
To create any static site, including blogs, I just use hugo, maybe a custom theme, edit it in any editor, including the online one at github/gitlab, once it merges/pushes the CI/CD script is just 3 lines and 2 of those deal with aws.
And of course the pricing depends on the traffic but s3 and cloudfront can handle a lot of traffic before it starts getting out of hand.
This is my blog post about how I set up my blog: https://blog.burakcankus.com/2023/04/23/getting-a-blog-runni...
But theoretically there is no such thing as a free lunch, and bandwidth costs money. Even cache hits in cloudfront generate bandwidth. A cache can't magically transfer text to your clients, it's still using transfer cost outgoing from cloudfront cache servers.
I'm no authority on this topic, but maybe because it still sparks interesting conversations.
I use MDX to write posts. I have CI/CD set up to auto publish when I push a new post. It's a simple set up (for a developer).
I don't get why one would want to or need to pay hundreds of dollars each year to host a simple blog, especially if that person is technically inclined. There are cheaper/free options.
Even your average Squarespace/Wordpress/Wix user will pay less than 400 euros a year. This sounds like the exact opposite of "perfect" to me.
It's only free while you have no traffic. Getting a single post on the top of HN could cost you e.g. $10.
Paying $400/year to get some static html based on markdown for a personal website seems insane to me.
Fashions with things come and go, but Jekyll is still around.
Much faster now too, thanks to improvements to Jekyll and importantly Ruby!
Compile times used to be painful, especially with inclusions and data files, but now I don’t have any noticeable build time pain!
Cloud Cannon is a great service to run Jekyll on, but not free I don’t think.
I'm sure Hugo is also great for the same reason, just haven't had a chance to mess with it.
I also wish there were an easier way up make an api call to get data to use within the template.
I tried migrating to hugo for these reasons but i'm not a fan of hugo syntax and i couldn't figure out how to setup a non-blog site.
Anyway, here's my blog post on it. I actually pay 20$ to AWS to host my Captain Rover server, but I have multiple web apps running.
I used the mailgun integration for mail, which involved adding a few lines to a config file and typing `ghost restart`.
Self hosting will always involve some fiddling, but I’ve fiddled less with Ghost than almost every other thing I’ve self hosted over the decades. Maybe I’m just lucky.
Jekyll remains one of the most robust solutions for small projects and blogs.
I do the same but I wish there was a easier way to make a blog post as it's still a bit fiddly. It would be great if it was as simple as sending an email or writing a message in a messaging app.
I'd bet that a side effect of paying that money is that you're significantly more likely to write posts. That would make it worth the money.
JUST USE WORDPRESS!
If you genuinely find it too hard to self host (and I’m banging my head against the table cos this is HN where people apparently know what they’re doing with tech, and it’s a LAMP stack ffs), then do it on Wordpress.com. Free! Easy! Simple to migrate if you do one day want to self host! No blockers to exporting your content as XML! Or CSV! Or hit up the API!
Funny old lark.
[0] https://www.notion.so/help/public-pages-and-web-publishing
Works out approx. £57 per year.
Send help pls