Why, anybody can have a brain. That’s a very mediocre commodity! Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain!
— The Wizard of Oz
So I decided to create a blog. Following the journey I described in the previous post, and some advice that prompted me to start considering owning the content I produce, this seemed like the only solution. Having “why” covered, I still had several unanswered questions, “how” being the prime among them. This post is here to document my tumultuous road (mostly for my future self, but if anyone’s present selves can benefit from it, so much the better).
Gathering Requirements
Before I dive into my understanding of the blogging landscape in 2020, I want to outline exactly what I was looking for:
Simplicity
My wish was to spend as little time and energy as possible on the technical aspect of operating a blog. I wanted the experience to be as smooth and straightforward as possible—both the initial setup of the thing, and the subsequent functioning thereof. I’ve had my fair share of overly complex systems; this time I wanted to focus on the content.
Price
Obviously, price is always a consideration. Free, or nominally priced, would be best. I’ve used a couple of managed solutions before (more on them below), and I knew that I’m too lazy to produce at a pace deserving of the price tag.
Ownership Of The Content
I passed on several (svbtle, silvrback) of the services considered because of this. I explained here why using a platform such as Medium was incompatible with my values in the long term, so trading one solution for another that would leave my writings at the mercy of others wasn’t an option.
Longevity
I didn’t expect this to be a differentiator, but apparently I’m not the only one worried about the fragility of digital tech. Some services (1, 2) explicitly give their users promises of longevity (or better yet, immortality!)
As my favorite poet once remarked, one’s writing should strive to outlive the author. Just like books, tech becomes more, not less, likely to survive the next year based on the number of years it has been in existence. In other words, while some incumbents die off, most of the big services/firms tend to stay in business.
Look And Feel
As evidenced by the style of this very blog, I have a certain minimalist aesthetic. I’m a bit obsessed with fonts, despise ads (even the cupid-level targeted ones), and place an arguably undue weight on the look of a website. [I like your words, Paul Graham, but my god man, how do you live with that monstrosity of a homepage!?]
Focus
I wasn’t planning on starting a business or, really, making any money out of this blog. I only cared about being able to post words (and occasional photos), and maybe provide a way to subscribe to newly published content. Nothing else. I had no need of fancy SEO, analytics, integrations with payment providers, and so forth.
—
Now that I knew what I was looking for, it was time to ask the Duck what’s available.
Whittling Down The Contenders
First, I struck down some of the obvious big names in the site-building/blogging domain. WordPress stank of elderly odors; Blogger is owned by Google (AKA Knowing What You Think, Inc), and seems to be barely maintained; I have a general dislike of Wix that’s based on nothing at all; SquareSpace felt like an overkill for what I was looking for; Tumblr didn’t seem to cater to my target audience; and as I said, I’ve already decided to leave Medium.
Following the biggest players were several 2nd tier platforms: Weebly and Jimdo were too focused on payments and businesses. Some were out of the race after one look at their homepage (Joomla, TypePad, Silvrbck). Postach.io looked kinda neat, but required Evernote to function, which was a deal-breaker.
I toyed with the idea of using one of the hyperminimalist blogging platforms (Bloggi.co, Notepin.co, Ghosttype, or even Bear). I was drawn to their philosophies (Bear said it best: “There is a website obesity crisis”), but ultimately decided that I needed a bit more than they offered.
Final Contenders
Ok, let’s have a look at the ones that intrigued me enough to seriously consider:
Write.as
Pros:
- Simple and clean style.
- Has a free offering, but otherwise is paid for by subscriptions (i.e. no ads).
- Has a sister service Snap.as for sharing photo galleries (relevant to my interests, as they say).
- Have a nice set of core principles, like data freedom and supporting an open web.
Cons:
- It’s a pretty young service, launched only in 2015, and seems to be a pretty small operation. I respect that, but I’m not sure I trust them enough yet to be around in 10 years.
- Subscriptions/newsletters seem to be a part of the Pro account ($6/month or $60/year), but looking over some of the blogs on the platform it didn’t seem built-in (or at least was convoluted enough that I didn’t figure it out).
- RSS is mentioned in the principles pages, but doesn’t seem to be supported out of the box.
- While data freedom is a professed principle, I’d rather not rely on exports.
Svbtle
Pros:
- Simple and clean style.
- Have the Forever Promise to keep the content online forever.
- Subscription only ($6/month or $70/year) — no ads.
- Hipster chic?
Cons:
- $70/year for displaying (nicely) formatted Markdown seems a bit excessive.
- The content is hosted on Svbtle’s servers, and so is ultimately at their mercy.
- It’s a blogging platform with almost zero extensibility. While it’s a big plus for simplicity, some day I’m bound to want to add some simple functionality (e.g. a call to action button), and I won’t be able to on a closed platform.
Ghost
Ghost’s messaging is a bit confusing. Similar to WordPress.org, it is an open-source (and thus free) product, and like WordPress.com it’s a complete managed solution. I never considered the managed solution ($29/month!?), but the hosted one was intriguing enough to actually try.
So I launched a free-tier EC2 instance, and tried to follow the instructions. At some point the process stalled (through no fault of Ghost’s, necessarily—I had a hard time figuring out custom Domain configurations), and I just couldn’t stomach having to deal with these low level issues outside of my work hours. I do enough debugging throughout the day—I didn’t want to be doing DevOps when all I wanted was to write.
In retrospect, I may have given up on Ghost too early. They seem to have a smart business strategy, excellent style and extensibility and a strong open source community. This probably could’ve been the solution, but for some reason, mucking around in the Terminal for this didn’t jive well with me.
The Ultimate Winner
And so, having found fault with all the possible solutions, which one did I go with in the end? Why, WordPress, of course! Indeed, the very first one I dismissed as too old and un-modern, was my eventual choice. The thing that made me ultimately go down this road was this excellent post from TheMinimalists. In it, they describe from start to finish how to create a blog using a self-hosted WordPress through BlueHost.
The post, and the accompanying video, were just thorough and detailed enough for me to feel comfortable wading through these muddled waters. The BYLT.co themes they suggested also caught my eye for their simplicity (if not their price…)
Making It Work
I followed the above guide with a good measure of success. The only thing that tripped me (and was quite annoying to figure out and eventually fix) was the domain name. Many years ago I bought a domain name on BlueHost, that I chose not to renew. I was, however, able to log into BlueHost with this domain name, though I didn’t own it anymore. This completely broke the flow, as BH assumed it was my primary domain now, but I couldn’t actually point the blog to it. When trying to set-up Ghost earlier, I also purchased another domain name from GoDaddy, and so I tried to make it work with the new WordPress site. But it didn’t help, as I couldn’t set it as the primary domain in BH, because transferring a newly purchased domain is forbidden for 60 days (why? No idea).
All this pretty much forced me to buy yet another domain name directly from BH (the one you’re seeing here—islandofsignal.com), followed by a lengthy talk with their support to turn it into the primary domain.
How Much Did This Thing Cost?
Let’s calculate the size of the hole left in my wallet after my (mis)adventures:
- $95.40 for 3 years of hosting the website on BlueHost.
- Another $11.99 (after a discount that came with the above hosting purchase) for 2 years of the islandofsignal.com domain name.
- An eye-watering (but mercifully one-time) $125 for the beautiful Less theme from BYLT.co.
- A dumb $14.55 for 2 years of a domain name I’m not going to use from GoDaddy.
The monthly price comes down to about $3 for hosting plus domain name (excluding the theme price, as it’s a one time purchase. It would be another $2 a month if amortized over 5 years of using it). A far cry from most of the various managed solutions, with a fair bit more control and an absolutely massive echo-system to rely on for plugins and support.
One Added Bonus
One consideration I didn’t put in the requirements, as it wasn’t a must, was integration with my writing app of choice—iAWriter. It supports several integrations with common blogging platforms—Medium, Ghost, Micro.blog—as well as WordPress. Which means that I can write this post in the comfort of my app, and then publish a draft to WP. It’s a nice extra perk of using a widely supported solution.
—
So there you have it. If you want longevity, (relative) simplicity, full control over your content, an affordable price, and a great look (at a price), you could do much worse than WordPress.