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Ask HN: What's the easiest way to write a blog without dealing with front-end

13 points by gnulinux ↗ HN
Software engineer here. I really love making small, random projects that take a few days to explore and then forget about (not in a bad way, I just think of a problem, spend a few days solving it until I'm satisfied). I always wanted to make a blog so that I can publish these little snippets to my friends etc but I'm always get bored at dealing with frontend. Currently they're in my computer waiting there rotting, I regularly delete them because there is nothing to do with them really... I tried github+jekyll but it still felt like I had to do some HTML/YAML development to get something working. It looks it's gonna work out of the box, but once you need something slightly niche, you have to dive into this rabbit. I'm more than happy to dive into rabbit holes, but I'd rather not spend time on frontend.

So my questions is, is there something that just works out-of-the-box? Maybe a paid option? I just want something as simple as "take this Jupyter Notebook and make a blog page goddamit". Features I need: syntax highlighting, normal text, showing graphs, matrices, images etc. Uh I even wish if it could support LaTeX too, but I understand that that might be asking too much. Any thoughts?

17 comments

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simplecomplex
HTML files.

HTML works out-of-the-box, offline, and with any editor. It's deployed easily, works with Git, and is practically free.

wartijn_
How do you suggest OP uses html files "without dealing with front-end"?
simplecomplex
He's a software engineer... Nothing is easier than just opening a text editor and writing HTML. Surely not static site generators and proprietary webapps.

But to each their own. I don't want to have to read documentation in order to write some words using my keyboard.

billconan
I'm making https://epiphany.pub , a mixture of medium.com and jupyter notebook. The idea is adding programmability to blog.

It's at an early stage, but I will appreciate some feedback.

=============

syntax highlighting, (yes, highlight.js based)

normal text (I don't understand what this means, epiphany is markdown based)

showing graphs (yes, you can write js or python, matplotlib is supported)

matrices (half , there is no official api, but since you can write programs on it, this should be doable),

images .

support LaTeX too, (it supports equations in latex.)

alok-g
This is awesome!

Are all commom programming languages with syntax highlighting if execution within the browser is not required? Can the syntax highlighting in that case be static (precomputed, without requiring Js)?

Are charting libraries included by default?

billconan
yes, I think the syntax highlighting covers a great range of languages (185 languages according to https://highlightjs.org/static/demo/)

No, highlighting can't be static I'm afraid for now. The back-end saves the articles in markdown. This allows users to preserve their editing history. I even implemented github like pullrequest and forking, so you could collaborate with others on blog articles.

https://epiphany.pub/commit?postId=2684bc94f9fcb9ffe637ebfbe...

server side rendering is possible, but it's a bit too much for me. this is still a solo side project. I'd like to make it a startup, but I really need some initial users and feedback to get some confidence.

billconan
btw, my eventual goal is a language agnostic platform. so js and python is just a start. next, I would like to on board c++.
theviajerock
I want to try it, looks interesting but... I can't complete the sign in with github. I don't know if the problem is my connection but the load of the site is very slow, specially the big image.
billconan
ah, sorry to hear that. I only have one server in California. My friend in Japan tried it, and didn't seem to have the issue you mentioned. I wonder if others see the same too. This is certainly an issue I need to fix.
otras
I use Hugo and GitHub pages. Here's my workflow:

- Make a new markdown file with the hugo command line ("hugo new posts/my-work-flow.md")

- Writing, writing, writing

- Run the server locally with drafts ("hugo serve -D")

- Check out the post, read through, more writing process

- Update the post to not be a draft and build the blog ("hugo")

- git add, commit, and push to origin

- Check my site in 5 minutes to see it updated

I try to keep it as easy as possible because writing is hard enough as it is. I find it's also very easy to spend time on the things around writing instead of writing, which isn't the point. I've done around three custom lines of CSS to style things differently from the premade theme, but I keep it to a minimum. I do CSS things for my day job and the last thing I want to do when coming home is debugging some custom styles I thought would be slick.

Not sure how you're planning to show graphs and matrices, but syntax highlighting, text, and images are very straightforward in the markdown.

mkay313
If you want to have Jupyter Notebook support then I suggest using Pelican. There's a plugin specifically for parsing Jupyter Notebooks, and you can also write simple md files. It's a bit more complicated to start with than Jekyll (meaning 2 afternoons instead of 1 :)) but it really works for me.

Source: I've been using Pelican with the said plugin for my personal website for the past few months.

sarcasmOrTears
Wordpress + syntax highlighter plugin
mooreds
Any recommendations on a particular syntax highlighter plugin?

Also note that you may not be able to run this setup on WordPress.com but there are plenty of hosts at the $10/month level who will be happy to host your wp install. The auto update process is pretty good too.

As far as jupyter, this looks useful:

https://eng.aurelienpierre.com/2018/05/05/make-jupyter-noteb...

tmaly
I just use Hugo. I write a markdown file. Run Hugo. Rsync html files to my host.