[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What is the best way to author blogs in 2024?
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Ask HN: What is the best way to author blogs in 2024?
I want to share technical blog content but I want to author it as I
am developing the content easily, screenshots and markdown would be
ideal and I don't want to self host things. What is the ideal tool
to help create quality content?
Author : badrabbit
Score : 42 points
Date : 2024-07-20 07:37 UTC (15 hours ago)
| curious_curios wrote:
| If you want simple, free and flexible you can build a static site
| blog with Hugo and host on GitHub Pages.
| homarp wrote:
| self-host gives you flavor though (your own domain, absolute
| choice in what you can use, and of course 'meta content' (this is
| how i host this blog, vs github pages, vs medium
|
| as for the quality of the content, it is usually a mix of
| personal experience (e.g. https://jvns.ca/blog/,
| https://folklore.org/0-index.html, https://www.filfre.net/ ) and
| number of hours to write.it
| torunar wrote:
| Whatever way you choose, don't forget to include an RSS feed for
| your blog.
| nyc111 wrote:
| Blogger is still around. Themes look very old fashioned but I
| think overall it's good enough to publish. This blog
| https://www.filfre.net/2024/07/the-later-years-of-douglas-ad...
| was on first page on HN a couple of days ago and it is blogger.
| cpach wrote:
| If you don't want to self-host then Ghost or wordpress.com might
| be worth checking out.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Not sure which one's the ideal tool but I'm slowly collecting
| them all here: https://manuelmoreale.com/blog-platforms
| cpach wrote:
| This list is great. Thank you for compiling it!
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| My pleasure. It keeps growing constantly, there are so many
| platforms out there.
| jessetemp wrote:
| I don't want to cramp your style, but displaying those in a
| table would really improve readability
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| I know but I don't want to mess with the site css since
| that's literally the only table I have used in 7 years ahah
|
| I do want to make a better page for that list though so I
| appreciate you nudging me.
| neontomo wrote:
| two options: link to an external google sheet as well, or
| add the table as an image
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Both not very appealing. Don't want to direct people
| towards a google site and I don't want to keep re-making
| an image every time I add an entry to the table.
| prepend wrote:
| Could you just use a markdown table and have it generate
| from a csv of all your tools? Many ssgs will go this.
| j_bum wrote:
| I love Quarto [0] and use GitHub pages for hosting.
|
| Quarto works nicely with several IDEs, and works out of the box
| with both Python, R, and Observable JS. Typst support was also
| just added, but I haven't explored that yet.
|
| The documentation is also extensive. Here is the link to setting
| up a blog [1].
|
| [0] https://quarto.org/
|
| [1] https://quarto.org/docs/websites/website-blog.html
| sakesun wrote:
| I'd suggest Astro (https://astro.build/)
| cpach wrote:
| Haven't tried Astro myself, but AFAICT it's compatible with AWS
| Amplify - which in my book is a huge plus.
|
| The Amplify hosting platform is very easy to get started with.
| I use it with Hugo, it's super-convenient, IMO.
|
| https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/deploy/aws/
| photon_collider wrote:
| Astro is really good for this use case. Also easy to host on
| platforms like Netlify.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| 1+ Astro.
|
| I actually built a low-code blog template using Astro for my
| partner and friends [1].
|
| I set it up so you can publish a github pages site from your
| browser (using a dev container), or you can just drop in
| markdown files into vscode. It's not quite no-code, but I think
| if I could add a simple UI it in theory could be.
|
| [1] https://github.com/easy-astro-blog-creator/easy-astro-
| blog-c...
| thelastparadise wrote:
| Great now I have analysis paralysis with all these options.
| cpach wrote:
| import random platform =
| random.SystemRandom().choice(["Astro", "Blogger", "Hugo",
| "WordPress", "Ghost"]) print(platform)
| maxbond wrote:
| Stylistic note, you can use `random.choice()`. If you aren't
| generating an encryption key, you probably don't need
| `SystemRandom`.
| cpach wrote:
| True. It's an idee fixe of mine. Doesn't really cost
| anything extra though.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Just make a static html page and be done with it after an
| afternoon.
| HermanMartinus wrote:
| Bear blog hosts a bunch of technical blogs, is markdown based,
| and open-source.
|
| https://bearblog.dev
| nickzelei wrote:
| I do a flavor of this. I use Hugo as my blog system and plugged
| in the bearblog template to it. Right now I host on GitHub
| pages with my own custom domain. Works well!
| cinntaile wrote:
| You should mention you're the creator.
| xrd wrote:
| (I'm biased because I wrote this blog tool, so take my comments
| with the appropriate skepticism)
|
| I recommend Svekyll (https://extrastatic.dev/svekyll/svekyll-
| cli). Svekyll combines the simplicity of Jekyll with the power of
| Svelte.
|
| This is a post I made recently:
|
| https://webiphany.com/2024-04-29-distance-sean-shawn
|
| That post uses Svelte to build interesting animations, includes a
| AI embedding model right inside the post and runs in your
| browser.
|
| And, if you want to hack the entire post yourself, scroll to the
| bottom, click the view source button and then click download.
| That will download a zip file which can build that post
| independently by just running "npm i && npm run build". That
| command generates a single HTML file with everything inlined so
| you can take that and put it on any static website.
|
| Svekyll posts are just markdown, but you can add anything like
| vanilla js and Svelte components, and tailwind is included
| automatically.
|
| I don't see anything else out there that is as simple or
| expressive as Svekyll. And 99% of that is just that I don't see
| anything out there that is as simple or expressive as Svelte.
| solardev wrote:
| Just put it on WordPress or Wix if you don't mind paying.
|
| If you don't want to pay, use Astro and put it on Vercel or
| Cloudflare Pages.
| whitefables wrote:
| Had the same grip as you, so I set out to fix it.
|
| I found solutions out there were either full fledged cms which
| are cumbersome to setup and honestly distracting.
|
| I was looking for something that was easy to work with like
| medium or notion, supports markdown syntax, and is fully headless
| because I like tinkering with the other frontend stuffs. If you
| have similar issues, check out wisp: https://wisp.blog/.
|
| You can even try out the editor before signing up for anything:
| https://www.wisp.blog/try-editor
|
| Also if you are looking to have a blog template to just kickstart
| the process, you can get everything wired up in the next 20 mins
| with this: https://github.com/Wisp-CMS/nextjs-blog-cms-wisp
|
| Disclaimer: I'm the builder for wisp and have 200+ happy users
| now.
| udev4096 wrote:
| Write in markdown, transfer it with rsync to a server running
| hugo or jekyll?
| slau wrote:
| If you don't want to maintain the infrastructure, you can also
| just commit to git and push to GitHub, and there have CI build
| the Hugo/Jekyll website and host it using GitHub pages.
|
| You can easily have your own domain connected to it and GitHub
| will provide an SSL certificate.
| cxr wrote:
| If you don't want to maintain infrastructure, don't adopt the
| kinds of software stacks created by the kinds of people who
| have only ever shown a giddiness for producing devops
| shovelware that assumes/requires maintenance.
|
| Even ignoring that, you run into stuff like this:
|
| > the first wall I hit [trying to update the website] was
| that I: Forgot [...] the esoteric Hugo conventions (has
| documentation, but it's not easy to parse at a glance) [...]
| not sure how I could have remembered all of the Hugo-isms,
| especially since I don't update this site very often and
| don't do static site generator work outside of this.
|
| Nothing about this sort of thing is unforeseeable. Don't
| choose these options.
|
| <http://web.archive.org/web/20210331182731/https://corytheboy
| ...>
| JCharante wrote:
| How about github gists? It has comment support built in
| vladsiv wrote:
| I am using a simple Jekyll theme minimal-mistakes[0] which I
| customized to suit my needs.
|
| I'm hosting my blog[1] on GitHub Pages, the repo[2] is public so
| you can take a look and fork it if you find it interesting.
|
| The setup is really simple, straightforward, and no-cost.
|
| [0] - https://github.com/mmistakes/minimal-mistakes
|
| [1] - https://www.vladsiv.com/
|
| [2] - https://github.com/VladimirSiv/VladimirSiv.github.io
| efilife wrote:
| Do not use eleventy, their cli bugs out very frequently Hugo is
| underpowered
| keiferski wrote:
| I recommend Ghost. You can self host it or use their hosting
| service.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| Follow up, what is the best way to author blogs for the next
| decade?
| Havoc wrote:
| Something static on a cdn
| cagey wrote:
| I'm a happy (albeit) infrequent user of https://mataroa.blog/
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30896661
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Text and imagery? Html is made for this.
| Vaslo wrote:
| You mean to code it by yourself? Nah, I, like most people
| interested in blogging, will pass.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Why so against it though? HTML isn't hard to understand. Like
| I said you can set it up in an afternoon. With any tool you
| have to learn how to use it. You use some website builder you
| aren't going to know what all of their gui functions do off
| the bat either, you will have to read up how to do what you
| want in their way. Might as well learn to use the right tool
| for the job which in this case is probably the easiest
| programming language there is. You basically write paragraphs
| of text and put in links to where the image files are and
| some tags and that's it. It's so easy.
|
| Or you can just not approach it, that's fine too, I don't
| care what you do. I'm only trying to be helpful.
| sujayk_33 wrote:
| I'd suggest github pages or substack
| esalman wrote:
| WordPress tbh.
| zaep wrote:
| I am very happy with Zola. Every SSG has its own shortcomings,
| for Zola I was initially bothered by lack of 'proper' footnotes
| and the insistence on having to have frontmatter, but I've yet to
| feel that I cannot do something really. The docs can be a touch
| confusing imo, but they're written with care.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Use whatever static site generator you like (*kyll, hugo, etc)
| and host it on a free static web hosting (netlify, github pages
| and others).
| activatedgeek wrote:
| I use Astro + Cloudflare Pages for my website [1]. I document the
| key bits of my stack here [2] for completeness.
|
| I've been very happy with Astro because it is a good example of
| low floor and high ceiling software. I can start with plain HTML,
| make it more flexible with Astro language (still very close to
| HTML), make authoring easier with Markdown (+ lifestyle
| extensions from Remark/Rehype), and extend to frameworks like
| React on a need basis (which I use for some pages where I use
| maps).
|
| [1]: https://sanyamkapoor.com [2]:
| https://sanyamkapoor.com/kb/the-stack
| jarofgreen wrote:
| https://jamstack.org/generators/ has a list of static site
| generators (I think you can ignore the "for jamstack" part).
| coding-saints wrote:
| I've been a fan of using Netlify and Netlify-CMS (Decap now) with
| 11ty template.
|
| https://www.11ty.dev/docs/starter/
| igor47 wrote:
| I like using my blog to experiment with technology. I used to use
| GitHub pages and wrote some tips about using it with custom
| domains: https://igor.moomers.org/posts/github-pages-proxying-
| and-red...
|
| But then I wanted to play with nextjs + typescript, have total
| control over how everything works, and host it myself in a
| container so I wrote a little static generator with next:
| https://github.com/igor47/blog
|
| I think there are many ways to generate a site from images and
| markdown and the "best" depends on what you're trying to achieve
| wannabebarista wrote:
| Jekyll is easy to use and you can write posts using markdown.
| There are several themes available out there, but it's also easy
| to work with the back end to customize. I've used Jekyll with
| Gitub pages for several years with no issues [0]. Plus, hosting
| is free on Github!
|
| [0] https://bcmullins.github.io
| nicbou wrote:
| I run allaboutberlin.com for a living. I switched from Craft CMS
| to a homebrew static site generator (Markdown + Jekyll) and it
| was a game changer.
|
| Static sites are almost maintenance-free. They cost pennies to
| host. You work on your content using the tools that you love, if
| necessary offline. There are many excellent markdown editors and
| no CMS comes close. Everything is under source control and
| deploys with a push.
|
| If you're used to text files and command line utilities, static
| site generators are a no-brainer. You probably shouldn't roll
| your own though.
| pjot wrote:
| Why not roll your own? Sure, you have to build it and maintain
| it, but isn't that in the spirit of programming? It's fun.
| carimura wrote:
| Let's rewrite the OS while we're at it since that's in the
| spirit of programming! :) Just use the nice tools available
| unless your goal is to rebuild the stack.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I am just happy with self-hosted Wordpress. Lots of interesting
| plugins, once you get the hang of it, you can write your own
| plugins (as I did). Can take moderate load (say, 30 visitors a
| minute) just fine.
|
| 1000 a minute would be bad, but that's not a typical load for a
| blog, unless something you wrote goes completely viral. Happened
| precisely once to me in 8 years of writing.
| pupontech wrote:
| Bear or pika.
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