I first began blogging many years ago with Google, but gave up and deleted my account when Google turned from “do no evil” to being very evil – by stealing my personal data. I vowed never to blog again until I could host the site myself. I realise this is not really going to stop data theft as all the greedy tech. corporations will still hoover it up as they attempt to feed their advertising algorithms and LLMs.
Wordpress
I dipped my toe in the water many years later when I need to keep a record, more like a journal, of one of my hobbies. This trial was quite successful except I could not get on with the Wordpress block editor. Having some past experience of HTML I found the block system rather restrictive. I understand the reasoning behingd it, but it didn’t work for me. The other big problem was again lack of control using the free version. If I put everything on Wordrpess I would be locked into a system. I could run my own Wordpress server but that seemed rather over the top – too many features – and I didn’t like the editor.
Inspiration from Fosstodon
After joining Fosstodon I was reinvigorated to resume blogging. There were many inspirational people on there that gave me the confidence to have a go at self hosting. There followed a long period of research and experimentation; seeing what others were using and gathering examples. A Static Site Generator (SSG) with a blog Theme seemed to be the way to go. There are a large number to choose from. Although I have a BSc Computer Science and spent about 20 years in the IT industry, my programming skills are very basic so I needed something that worked out of the box – or almost.
Hugo
After many frustrating evenings loading different SSGs I chose Hugo. It offered most of the features I thought I might need, it was reasonably easy to get up and running, although not as easy as it way made out to be. I loaded the Blackburn Theme and after a bit of tweaking this is what I am now as you read this.
That’s a very condensed version of how I got here, I hope that you think it worth my effort – and your time.