Micro.blog has always stubbornly stuck to static-site generation (first Jekyll, then Hugo) and probably always will, even as there is a lot more complexity layered on top. There’s just something future-proof about having a folder of HTML files. We need to better expose this foundation, not hide it.

@manton agree. Not everyone will catch the meaning of "data portability" and what it means for the future of digital content, but it's certainly something unique to Micro.blog.

@manton Preach!

@manton speaking of which, rather than the archive format, the raw Markdown + assets would be more useful to me.

We talked about this years ago. I know you want to make a standard, but for more technical users, the “source” would be better and immediately usable.

@manton even the feed here on micro.blog? That seems surprising!

@manton I’m (over-engineering!) an event-sourced data model for my project with the express intent of making static generation easier. HTML in a folder is a solved problem, so let’s use it!

@manton You say stubborn, I say principled.

@manton even things like each users timeline? If so that blows my mind.

(I found a post you wrote in 2021 to learn more. I just started a blog with Eleventy so all this stuff is new to me!)

@boris I think we can do both. You can export the raw Markdown as a folder already, but then have to grab the images from the .bar file. There could be another option that has both together.

@haglund Oh, not the timelines. Just everything at someone’s hosted blog.

@manton keep it that way. It’s a major selling point compared to something like Ghost.

@manton I really
love this about the service, but it’s been tricky to debug as I explore migrating my personal site over. Back-porting posts has been a pain and some are showing up twice. It would be nice to have more ways to interact with the static generation process; forcing a rebuild, nuking the cache, etc

@alexlafroscia Thanks! I agree. Just in case you didn't know, you can clear the cache and force a rebuild with Account → View logs → Rebuild. If you're still seeing duplicates, send us an email too.

@manton that is VERY good to know! I really want to migrate my site over but was stuck on this. I appreciate the tip!

@manton as long as the images have the same path structure and can be decompressed into an asset folder that the markdown points to, that’s fine.

@jonah Thanks!