Ask HN: Which blog platform is suitable for personal blogging? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Which blog platform is suitable for personal blogging?

14 pointselliot9327 comments

Hello everyone. I'm looking for a blogging platform for my personal blog. I don't want something self-hosted, just a simple and affordable platform. Which platforms do you recommend?

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Throw a dart ;-)

  import random
  platform = random.SystemRandom().choice(["Astro", "Blogger", "Ghost", "Hugo"])
  print(platform)

Hugo doesn’t include hosting but you can host on AWS Amplify, GitHub Pages, CloudFlare Pages, Vercel, etc.

For additional inspiration, some earlier threads with similar theme:

Ask HN: What do you use for your personal blog? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41608459 - Sept 2024 (44 comments)

Ask HN: What is the best way to author blogs in 2024? -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41014806 - July 2024 (134 comments)

Ask HN: What tech stack do you use for your blog? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38957782 - Jan 2024 (7 comments)

Some earlier threads about static site generators:

Ask HN: Best static site generator for non-designer? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41397521 - Aug 2024 (25 comments)

Ask HN: What's the simplest static website generator? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39861593 - Mar 2024 (74 comments)

this comment will help me a lot thank you!

You’re welcome. Cheers!

Mataroa (https://mataroa.blog) is simple, to the point, blazing fast, open source, and just US$ 9 per year. It's quite barebones, but IMHO the platform's philosophy lends itself well to the cause of "I just want to write, I don't want to spend time fiddling with settings and templates".

I wrote about my experience when I migrated to it: https://pratul.net/blog/mataroa-just-works-for-me/

Don't spend 400 hours customizing your favorite blogging software then 0 hours blogging. :)

(I use Jekyll -> netlify. I only use Jekyll because I used it once 10 years ago. I literally write posts in Github directly and commit to master because blogging should be informal and F the haters)

A related webcomic: https://rakhim.org/honestly-undefined/19/.

https://bearblog.dev/ is pretty cool

When you post blogs on other platforms, while you may build recognition for yourself, you will be building their brand. On the other hand, if you blog on your own website, you will be building your own brand. Both of the blogs below are built in Wordpress, using elementor.com, which makes it very easy and provides a free version. hostinger.com provides great hosting pricing on wordpress. https://ctofraction.com/blog https://gintchinfineart.com/blog/

It depends, there are a lot of options including the age old blogger, wordpress, substack, ghost, medium etc. May be you can checkout substack (https://substack.com/for-bloggers)

Blot.im - you can write your posts in Markdown, Microsoft Word, Pages, Google Docs, OpenOffice. Your documents can be stored in Git, or a folder in Dropbox, or a folder in Google Drive, and the service publishes them from there. $5/month

(not affiliated, just used and liked it back when I had a public facing blog)

https://blot.im/

Nucelo gives you everything you want. As an open source platform, you can share unlimited articles for $4 per month. You also get a place to share your projects and bookmarks. It doesn't end with this, you can take a look.

https://nucelo.com

I'd humbly offer the service I and the team at Good Enough built, Pika:

https://pika.page

It's humane and built for people, not businesses. It's quite lovely in our opinions!

Hackernoon, substack or medium are the best to bootstrap your readership.

If you already have a following through other social media, I second jekyll on github pages or wordpress.

Or, just look at what the top bloggers use and follow along.

Static site generation and Github pages. Start with the Jekyll generator Github supports out of the box and roll your own if you need something it doesn't provide.

Wordpress, Ghost, Substack .... anything that doesn't require asking a yak how they like their sideburns.

just in case: if you like old school and you like blogging like in the 90s, without ads, for free, and the ability to add your own domain - http://web1.0hosting.net/

Wix? Pay a few dollars a month, write what you want, nothing to maintain.

Astro is great and has deployment guides for so many platforms

I think in the selfhost with hugo or Jekyll is nice options!

Build your own because u know what is best for u.

If you’re open to spending a bit, I highly recommend a hosted Ghost.js blog (around $11/month). It gives me full control over my content and domain, and I can choose to keep it ad-free. In my opinion, it’s a far better option for building your personal brand compared to platforms like Medium or DEV.to, which often have paywalls and can be cluttered with garbage low-quality content.

+1 for Ghost. The platform really is all about blogging. It’s ecosystem is not as huge was the WordPress ecosystem, but substantial nonetheless. Building a custom theme for Ghost is also far more accessible for beginners than building a Wordpress theme, at least in my experience

You can also self-host Ghost. Which I did for a while, but didn’t want to spend my free time being a sysadmin. I decided paying for hosting was worth it, and helps marginally support the product.

I use Posthaven because one of its primary goals is permanence...not that I blog much.

Or very well.

Good luck.

Self host a simple blog. It's the best.

For personal blogging, platforms like WordPress and Medium are highly recommended.

I think Medium is a bad way to go. You give up control of your content and bow it’s presented to users. Additionally, there’s a lot of low quality content on Medium you may not want to be associated with.

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