I stopped blogging several years ago. Over the last few years, I've been writing plenty of private essays. However, very recently I have been considering starting to publish my writing and, well, start blogging again publicly. I have no desire to waste time on templates, look-and-feel, visual stuff, etc. I just want to write a bog-standard html file, and then publish it...I do value leveraging html elements that help with meta data (e.g. microformats, etc.), but don't care about how things look - and these elements that i value are all invisible to most users anyway. I would be fine with just crafting html by hand, deploying it via sftp or some boring deployment pipleine, and that's it. But, then, I started thinking: what about having an RSS/Atom feed? I used to consume content via an rss reader, but have not done so in years. But, I don't want to manually craft that feed file; nope, sorry. But, I've heard a comment or two from acquaintances that rss/atom feeds and syndication are really something that people - like my potential audience - might really desire. So, I should really consider having one. This means that either I have to craft several things manually (from the blog post itself, the list of archived posts, the feed file, etc.), or use a static site generator that will handle all this for me, etc. I don't want to get trapped down a rabbit hole where I am spending so much on the tooling, the scaffolding, twiddling with templates, or the publish process itself. I just want the minimal for writing and publishing, I want it to live on my domain name, and that's it. Am I crazy or extremely lazy for not wanting to generate an RSS/Atom feed file?

So, here's my ask of you all nice people: are feeds like RSS/Atom feeds even worth it? If so, does anyone have recommendations for a manual process where i can craft the blog post's html by hand, but somehow leverage a portion of a static site generator (or some minimal tool) to only automate the creation of the RSS/Atom feed file? Thanks in advfance for any constructive feedback!

P.S. - One thing that re-ignited my desire both to write more in public, and keep it alive with minimal fuss was my re-reading of Jeff Huang's excellent "This Page is Designed to Last" post: https://jeffhuang.com/designed_to_last/

I used to use a random FOSS Python program to manage my blog. The software honestly wasn't the best (partially my own fault for not setting it up super well) and I stopped using it, lost my blog's source code, and haven't updated the blog in a long time because of that. So I'm looking for a static site generator that is simple, well maintained, and no-frills.

Hey guys,

I have been flip-flopping back and forth on this idea for a while, and would love some feedback on whether peeps would find this valuable.

Although I still call my self a "software developer" (and try to code daily), for the last 8 years I have ran a small 5-person agency that I started from the ground up, so my role was really CEO/CTO/CFO/Everything-O. My company focused on delivering high-quality custom software. Not brochure websites, and not Wordpress - our niche was internal business software (or as I like to call it "boring software for boring businesses") - and for a client service company we got very high margins of return.

Last year my business was acquired by a larger company which was an amazing result after the time and effort I had poured into it. I have realised I now want to help other developers who want to start their own software agency, or maybe they already have and are looking for hints or advice on certain topics.

So I have started Dev to Agency - a part blog part guidebook for how a full-stack developer can start and successfully run a software development agency, the things to pay attention too (and the things to ignore), and the key-values that I feel helped my business go from nothing, to 7 figures per year, and then to being acquired (if that is a path people would want to take).

I have just published my first couple of posts, About Dev To Agency that is a rundown of what I hope to achieve with this, then a post about My small custom software development agency - which gives an overview of what I built and where I think my articles will add value, and lastly You are the gold standard which covers how I feel an owner/maker should set the businesses standards and practises based of their personal values.

I have never written a blog before (or really done any writing before), so it would be fantastic to get some feedback from the community, and if there are any developers that this could interest then please subscribe on the website.

Cheers,

Chris.

I'm thinking of registering a new domain to host a personal blog and a few other pages that is somewhat separate from my current personal portfolio page, as the blog will likely not be directly relevant to my work. But since this is a more personal project, I want to branch out in terms of TLDs - I've previously used exclusively .com endings as they lead to the least confusion and are the most accepted.

I'm a little overwhelmed by the number of options these days, so I wanted to take a little straw poll to see which ones people think are the best. The name itself will be my initials "gpxl", and the endings I am considering are

• .info
• .xyz
• .fyi
• .computer
• .me

But I'm curious to see what others think. I would go with .xyz but I feel like then my domain name becomes an unintelligble string of letters - gpxl.xyz, so I'm wondering what others think and what arguments exist for choosing one over another.

P.S. If anyone has recommendations for registars I'm open to those too. Currently using google domains but open to switching.

I know this has been posted before, but I was going through old posts about blogging and at least half the blogs linked in the comments were offline now, so I thought I'd bring this topic back to light.

Do you run your own personal blog, and if so, could you share some details?

• Is it self-hosted, or do you rent server space?

• Do you use Wordpress or another blog platform like that, publish through other means like a flat-file CMS, or did you build it from scratch?

• What topics do you write about?

• How consistently do you post; or alternatively, why don't you post as often as you would like to?

• Do you keep analytics, or do you write regardless of how many clicks you get?

• Is your site monetized with ads or otherwise?

• How popular is your blog on average?

• How do you keep up with other writers' posts?

I'm bringing this up because it seems like most places around the web centered on blogging are more in it for the money rather than for the content. Places like /r/blogging and the like are all talk about how to maximize views, earn revenue, and find your niche. I'd love to see some discussion more geared towards the content and construction of individual blogs, as opposed to people trying the next "get rich quick" scheme on their lists of passive income opportunities.

Personally, I have multiple blogs for the sole purpose of giving me a platform to voice my opinions or share things that interest me without being constrained to a centralized platform like Twitter or Medium. I'd love to hear what you have all made and/or shared online, as well as the process behind making it happen.

I currently have a personal "portfolio" site that I haven't updated in close to a year. I'm planning now on revamping it, and I am using this opportunity to reconsider the static site generator I am using.

I host my site on Github pages, which means that Jekyll was originally very appealing due to its nice integration with Github. However, I have found it difficult to greatly customize the themes I find, and I'm the type of person that likes to get everything "just right". It seems like Hugo might be more extensible in this regard, but I'm not sure if that alone makes it worth the switch from my current setup. Anecdotally, a lot of the blogs I find whose layouts I really like tend to use Hugo.

Pure HTML/CSS is an option but that seems like a big overhead for what I want. I'm no web developer and I don't plan on becoming one.

https://gitlab.com/smoores/pliant

I’ve been a software developer for about three years, and I’ve always been enticed by and passionate about the open source scene. I have an assortment of projects variously available on GitHub and GitLab, but this is the first time I’ve ever created an open source project intended to be used by others.

Pliant is a barebones starter kit for anyone wanting to self host their own blog. It came out of my own efforts to start a blog, and it’s what currently powers https://tfhe.shanemoore.me.

I’d love to hear you’re feedback, or just discuss open source, blogging, web technologies, or whatever else comes up.

I've been thinking for a while about making my own little personal website/blog, and I was wondering what other people here on Tildes might have set up. I feel like having one could be a cool little way to get myself to write more often and hopefully improve my writing, especially when it comes to technical subjects.