@numericcitizen. Oh thats funny I literally moved over my main site to blot today decladtwo. I guess you are right and there is a risk with a one man shop but I had to leave Wordpress it's a great website builder but for a simple clean blogging tool it had grown a bit cumbersome for me. Ghost I was looking at seriously but I am an avid Obsidian user so the temptation of using a vault to manage my website was too great! Also now my posts/notes are in markdown so I feel in control of them again.
@numericcitizen Related, I was also seeing some concern that the Commento team has gone silent as well. I can't find the reference though. Hope they're both OK.
@garethjones another possibility would be to build a static website using a WYSIWYG editor and publish on an FTP server like in the old days! Remember iWeb from Apple?
@jack yeah Commento is another thing that I’m reconsidering… it’s not cheap and less than 1% of people care to drop comments … except from people from Micro.blog which is more like 50% ! 😅
@numericcitizen I considered setting up there and did not in part because of this concern. Would that also be an issue for micro.blog?
@Denny I don’t think so. Micro.blog is much more vibrant and the guys behind are actively improving it on an more or less regular basis.
@numericcitizen @bjhess Seconded, I’d like to read more about this too. I’m curious why you chose to forego an SSG, and what differences or benefits this workflow provides.
@numericcitizen @pimoore I wrote about this in two blog posts. bjhess.com/blog/2022... & bjhess.com/blog/2022...
The latter mentions some of my inspirations toward the end. I think for me it feels good to eliminated as many in-between / setup steps as possible. At least it feels good for now. :) I am currently trying to keep the design consistent across the history of posts, but I'm not sure if that's a great idea. Some folks will include the full CSS file in each blog post's folder, basically locking each post to the design that existed when it was posted. I kind of wonder if this is the way to go long term as it lets you release from the troubleshooting of keeping the design up-to-date, especially when you have to do a global find and replace of markup to make sure it works. It also seems kind of fun to have the blog posts themselves indicate the site's design evolution.
If you really like playing with the visual, tweaking the design for every post intentionally could also be fun. You want to be conscious of that choice, though, because it will slow down writing progress. For some that design activity might be motivating to create, for others it would get in the way.
@numericcitizen @jack Commento does look interesting. I hadn't heard of it. I do kind of want comments on my blog, and being a static site the only option is a widget. But then I think of the time I'll spend designing Commento (or whatever) to fit the look and feel of my blog and I get tired.
@bjhess @numericcitizen Comments on my blog are mostly a useless appendage, but I found Cusdis to be easy to implement and there's a free tier so I'm using that now. cusdis.com
@bjhess you can wrangle static sites to handle comments without a widget, although I think you’d be better off using WordPress or similar :-) Another option is a flat-file CMS, like Kirby.
@bjhess @numericcitizen Funny you mention art directed posts., as that’s something I’ve considered doing. Like you mention it’s definitely a hindrance to pushing out regular content, and I’m already suffering from that problem. :)
@jack @numericcitizen Cusdis looks interesting, and you've implentent it on your blog nicely. I'll have to keep that in mind. Thanks!
@pimoore @numericcitizen Heh, yeah. If writing, writing, writing is your goal, none of this customizing tomfoolery is probably advisable. If having fun is your goal, and this goofy tweaking is making it more fun, then I say … fun away!
@bjhess I probably won’t go through with it in that case. Customization of this magnitude needs to take a distant second to writing instead, for me. I think the novelty of doing something like this is greater than the work it would no doubt involve. 😂
Thanks for the great write up, I love geeking out about this stuff even if I remain status quo with my blog.
@pimoore No problem and thanks for the kind words! One thing I’ll throw in the mix is that customizing colors and fonts might not be too distracting. Wait, don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to me!!