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Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
I talked about not blogging as much in my June 2022 review. Internal monologue around that continues and I’m constantly finding myself wondering if keeping this blog is worth it.
Maybe it’s just an itch.
Some smart people on Mastodon have recommended just keeping things as they are, and posting occasionally if that’s what I find myself comfortable with — even if it’s just 3 posts in one whole year — and that sounds logically quite right.
Plus, keeping things as they are has the least amount of resistance. It’s probably why I haven’t done anything radical for a long time now. A long time at least in the blogging-setup timezone.
A part of me wants to move to a static site, “archive” this blog and perhaps move the blogging portion to some other platform where everything related to it is “managed.” That would certainly be keeping in tune with what’s been going on with my tech in general the last twelve-ish months.
I wouldn’t be happy keeping two “sites” and maintaining visual consistency across the two (but maybe I don’t have to do that?). It’s a compromise.
Alternatives.
However, I enjoy absolutely nothing in the market.
Substack seems like a misfit and UX hell.
While Matt has been kind enough to offer a regional discount, I’m not sure I still see a long-term future with Write.as (something really nice about it is it’s a part of the fediverse).
Ghost is incredibly expensive and for my use case, not so different from WordPress. It doesn’t offer anything that makes me want to really try it given my feature requirements.
Medium.com hasn’t been held in high regard for a long time now. And uncertainty around their business decisions is something I don’t want to deal with.
Dev.to does not seem like a fun place to be. It’s a much nicer Medium.com, but its niche is of course just developers. I don’t make many of those posts anymore. Plus it’s kind of like Instagram but for developer blogs. I just don’t like the vibe.
Plume is not maintained. Side story: I was close to committing to a small annual monetary support but that’s when I found out it’s no longer actively maintained.
BearBlog won’t allow scripts and therefore Plausible Analytics.
Prose.sh is way too geeky. SSH for login? Nope. Just yesterday, I opened and edited this post on my phone. A web browser was all I needed. WordPress obliged, too, of course.
Micro.blog seems interesting but I’m not sure it’s one for me. Manton declined a regional price too.
Publii sounds like an excellent idea in theory but all it felt to me was clumsy and more work than a managed/hosted blog.
Self-hosting Tanzawa or GoBlog is no longer a task I want to undertake.
A static site generator is literally the last option on my list. Heck, it’s not even an option at all. It’s great for brochure websites, one-pagers, documentation, etc. but for blogging, it just doesn’t cut it. You cannot change my mind. Don’t even try.
Sigh. Perhaps paid Write.as is the only service worth considering seriously, thanks in large part to their fediverse compatibility, which is a very attractive feature.
Micro-blogging.
I also really enjoy micro-blogging or writing long walls of text but on a micro-blogging service because who sees what is very much in my control.
A public blog doesn’t offer that convenience. I have considered just using a micro-blogging service and then a bunch of static pages on my domain still.
What next?
I don’t know.
We’ll see.
My apologies for this disappointing conclusion.