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Ask HN: What are the best blogging platforms for developers in 2020?

18 points by iam-tony ↗ HN
Now that I'm stuck home due to the corona virus, I want to pick up blogging.

I'm curious what blogging platforms out there do you consider to be the best. Features like Markdown and syntax highlighting would help.

In the past I used Ghost, WordPress, and I even built my own blogging engine. I don't want to spend a month creating a new one so I'm looking for a complete solution.

Which blogging platform do you prefer?

17 comments

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davismwfl
I still always seem to fall back to Wordpress because the idea is to create content, not play with the software.

Wordpress just works and has an active community and a ton of plug-ins which lets you focus on generating content and not fighting constantly with the tool. There are plenty of inexpensive hosting options for Wordpress, and lots of templates to get moving.

If the goal is to blog, use what is popular and already works so that you are blogging and not constantly focused on the platform. The more time you deal with the platform the less you focus on actually posting which is what is important.

FWIW, I don't particularly like Wordpress, and there are parts I downright despise, but it works and gets the job done.

iam-tony
I completely agree! The point is creating content.

I focus on choosing the "right" platform now so that I wont have to think about it 5 years from now.

I have had horror experiences with Wordpress in the past and that is why I avoid it.

mpurham
I faced this same decision a couple years back and one thing I would say is I have tried flat file services like blot (https://blot.im) and even building my own CMS and ultimately just ended up wasting time as I needed more functionality over time. I built https://radarthemes.com which I used to build blogging themes for developers, creators, and for myself. I even released a free theme for others who faced the same road I faced.

- https://radarthemes.com/theme/trooper-lite/ (free) - https://wordpress.org/themes/trooper-lite/ (free)

WordPress is a fantastic cms and I highly recommend it for blogging. If you do not care about additional functionality then blot.im was a great service.

iam-tony
blot.im has blown me away! Thank you!
unlinked_dll
jekyll hosted on github.io or netlify seems to be in vogue
iam-tony
I have explored multiple JAMstack solutions such as Gatsby, Nuxtjs, HUGO and Jekyll with Netlify or Contentful but having to learn a front-end framework from scratch will take time that I believe is not worth it for a blog
sexy_seedbox
Hugo & Jekyll should be very easy to learn as long as you stick to a simple theme with minimal CSS & Javascript (jQuery). Only go Gatsby/Gridsome/Nuxt if you want to dive into React/Vue.
billconan
https://epiphany.pub

version controlled, can run clojure, js and python code on page, can fork and submit pull request.

markdown format with equation and emoji support.

iam-tony
epiphany looks good, thank you for the recommendation
MisterBiggs
I think distill https://rstudio.github.io/distill/ looks very promising. My only issue with it is I don't know much R and I really don't have any desire to learn much more than just loading and plotting data.
iam-tony
I've checked it out and believe that it is excellent for people trying to visualize their findings in R. Thanks!
olaven
If you don't mind some self promotion:

I made a tiny, markdown-based blogging solution called Markblog. (https://github.com/olaven/markblog)

No frontend framework. Just Markdown. With Github Pages/Github Actions you'll have hosting and automatic building as well (https://olaven.org/out/guides/blog_with_git_and_markdown.htm...)

This is the blogging platform i prefer and I hope it can be of use for someone else :-)

iam-tony
Markblog looks promising, thank you!
mkranjec
After postponing it for quite some time with all this Covid-19 measures I finally found time to setup my own blog. I decided to go with Gatsby. Not regretting it yet.

Whatever you will choose, it will be good enough. Don't worry, focus on content.

shopkins
I've been using https://write.as for years and enjoying it. Perfect for plain text, does Markdown and code syntax highlighting.
aguilarm
I recently re-platformed my personal site onto Hugo, and it's really nice. You can easily use GitHub to host, and posts are in markdown.

Templating is pretty simple and as close to plain html markup as I think you can reasonably get. Outputs flat files that you could put anywhere.

Totally reduced friction to post, no server processes or database to babysit and the binary to build it is one versioned package. I will be able to build it for years without worrying too much. Can't recommend enough.