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.
@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
