
Ask HN: What's the best technical platform to start a blog? - cjbastian
I&#x27;m a software developer who&#x27;s (minimally) proficient with web dev and am looking to start a technical&#x2F;personal blog as a hobby. In your experience, what&#x27;s the best way to build the blog itself? What are the pros and cons of platforms like wordpress, wix, weebly, etc. versus building a static site from the ground up and hosting with AWS or some other service?
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anngrant
I've been currently running two blogs, one set up with WordPress.org, another
one with Weebly.com . My Weebly blog attracts a great number of visitors
daily, so if I make a decision to create a third blog, I'll definitely go with
Weebly. Here is a comprehensive review on Weebly -
[http://www.webbuildersguide.com/website-builders-
reviews/wee...](http://www.webbuildersguide.com/website-builders-
reviews/weebly-review/) .

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itamarst
Do whatever takes the least amount of your time, and results in most
comfortable writing experience. The important part is writing, not the
technology.

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itamarst
I guess I should note that for my blog
([https://codewithoutrules.com](https://codewithoutrules.com)) Jekyll lets me:

1\. Write in Markdown, useful for technical writing. 2\. Have it look decent.

But if I was doing non-technical content I'd possibly go with something
hosted. And for all I know wordpress.com or something has the markdown plugin
setup by default these days.

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Mz
As others have said, do what takes the least maintenance overhead for you
personally.

I originally hand coded my blogs and got very little actual writing done. I
moved to Word Press and got a little more actual writing done. I moved to
BlogSpot and I get a lot more writing done, though I hear people talk trash
about it all the time.

Do whatever allows you to focus on the writing, not the backend.

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pesfandiar
Is your project about writing or just building the weblog software/system? If
you'd like to write, your audience doesn't care what underlying technology
you're using, so you go with whatever is the cheapest, easiest, or with least
maintenance.

I'm personally using Github Pages (with Jekyll). I've never paid anything, and
except for some version upgrade a while back, haven't had to do any
maintenance. As for the upfront cost, it took me a bit to get a Jekyll theme
to work out for me, and I'm not particularly fluent with Ruby. Good luck.

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mod
I have used lots of blogging software: WP, jekyll, ghost, & more.

I prefer ghost.

In the end, as someone else said, this decision & later maintenance is the
easy part. Writing is the hard part.

If you run wordpress, you will deal with a hack sooner or later. I would only
use it if you require functionality that exists in plugins that you can't or
don't want to replicate for your platform.

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laktek
If you want to deploy it as a static site, but want the convenience of doing
browser-based editing, you can try Pragma
([https://pragma.build](https://pragma.build)).

(ps: we are currently in private beta, will send an invite soon)

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fiftyacorn
Im wordpress - glenware.wordpress.com - so even simpler than self-hosting. I
kept weighing up running my own instance - but my reason for blogging is to
keep my techncal notes in one place

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tmaly
I use wordpress for now. I am working on something more custom for my
sideproject. But if you just want to start writing with minimal setup, Medium
is also nice.

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intro-b
i like Ghost's design aesthetic and usage, although what's most important is
using whatever tool facilitates writing with least overhead

