Ok you magnificent weirdos, todays question is this: now that WordPress is contaminated, what can I use to power a website that has themes (so I can change the look easily) and lets me just log in and post/update without it updating HTML files manually?
@Verso I like @getkirby (https://getkirby.com) but its theming is not exactly plug and play. The advantage is that you can tailor the website and content format to your liking, which I really like to have.
@Verso IIRC, the actual software is fine (ie, the CMS). It's only wordpress.com that will take your content and put it in the AI furnace (maybe jetpack and similar plugins which you don't need are also an issue, donnow).
@sethadam1 Matt Mullenweg (CEO of Automattic, who runs Wordpress.com and also basically in charge of the Wordpress foundation) sucks.
@Verso I use carrd.co for my simple portfolio site (jamieblumberg.com) so if you don't need anything too fancy it is a great option.
@octothorpe the software is managed by the WordPress foundation and the only info I can find about leadership of the foundation includes Mullenweg. I'm not interested in supporting him anymore.
@jamie_blumberg thanks! I'll check it out. Odds are good I don't need much. I only started thinking about it when I was debating sharing my ice tea recipe and wondered where I should put it. I own a bunch of domains, I should have at least one actual website somewhere (:
@Verso I think Carrd will work for you then. It’s something ridiculously cheap like $20 or $30/year for up to 5 simple sites and each of those can have a custom domain. At those prices you're practically losing money if you don't sign up or something.
@Verso it’s medium-technical, but I love Hugo + Netlify. All markdown, no html. Tons of themes. Easy to test locally. All content is version controlled.
I’m never putting my text in a database again.
@lkanies I wouldn't mind medium technical, I just don't want to go back to text files and FTP. I like retro things, but that process can miss me completely.
@Verso commit your blog posts to git, they deploy automatically to your web site.
It’s fabulous. Like, my favorite tech change in the last decade.
@ryanbooker yeah, i love micro blog! I know @manton and @jean and I have an account, I just havent spent a ton of time investigating features. It is nifty but I think of it more as a social thing as opposed to a website. It's probably both and I just haven't paid attention. (:
@lkanies hmm. That seems like it's within my skill set. As my dad would say, I'll meditate on it. Thanks! (:
@ryanbooker I'm definitely the type to decide my site needs a makeover and then browse themes for an age. (:
@Verso fwiw, it was the first tool I found that sent me down the “local first software” path. I was super frustrated trying to keep edits in sync between my flat files on disk, where I wrote, and my Wordpress site, where people saw it. “Why can’t I just publish from git?”
So I have profound fondness for it in a way that might be harmful or helpful to my recommendation :)
@Verso if you can use git and point a dns record at a site, you can get it working.
https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-netlify/
@Verso There are definiteyl themes, and you can edit/make custom themes. It's Jekyl underneath I think… but I have never been bothered to work it out. :)
@ryanbooker @Verso It used to be Jekyll underneath, now it's Hugo. 🙂 Happy to answer any questions of course!
@manton Was making that change as massive of an undertaking as it sounds? And why'd you decide to swap?
@jarrod It was a big change. The main reason was performance. Hugo is very fast. If anything was slow in Micro.blog, I wanted it to be my fault and so fixable.
@manton Good motivation. 👍 Are there any other backend systems that you're keeping your eye on? Or is Hugo still the state-of-the-art for what you're doing?
@Verso micro.blog (if you want a batteries-included friendly hosted service and are willing to throw some $ at them - definitely worth it). Otherwise, I also have good results using bludit ( www.bludit.com ) which should do what you want. Community's quite small though, there are themes but definitely not as many as to be found for wordpress.
@jarrod We're locked into Hugo now because of all the themes and plug-ins. I've considered supporting multiple blog engines, but I think it would be too much of a distraction.
@Verso I'd like to make another vote for micro.blog. The premium is such a great value. $10/mth and you get five sites that all include video, audio, and image hosting. So, very good! And you can theme out to your heart's content.
@Verso Possibly Backdrop. It's a fork of Drupal 7, with some admin usability enhancements, so more Wordpressish and nowhere near as complex as Drupal 10 https://backdropcms.org
