Blogging Options?

[Onio]

Hey there!

For the past two weeks or so I've been wanting to start a blog. I'm an art photographer who wants to transition careers, has too many ideas and interests, and generally just needs a place to write his way out of the fog and into a sense of direction.

Now.. I almost signed up for hosting to go ye olde Wordpress route, but I had my finger on the trigger for days on end, wondering if this is the route I should go. Then, last night, I discover the old web revival. Coincidence?! Probably. But it has me wondering if I should still go that Wordpress route, or if there are more interesting options I could use with something like Neocities. I'm not even sure what my options are!

Any ideas?

[Melooon]

If you search "blog" there are a bunch of blog discussions that might have helpful info for you - although I dont think anyone has asked this exact question before!

So the lay of the land with blogs and the web revival - Id split them into 3 categories:

Level 1 - Basic Neocities Blogs:
The most basic kind of blog, only really suited to occasional small posts - You can hand code your blog entries in HTML or use Zonelets to help (a little) - You can also use m15o's blog format to generate RSS feeds and standardise your blog - I think most web revival sites should have one of these anyway, even if its just for site update news!

Level 2 - Indie Web Blog services:
This kind of blog is for more frequent posters who mainly want to do text posts and are not looking to be mainstream - it will be missing a lot of fancy features, but it gets the job done as a personal blog - all are free - m15o's Smol.Pub is a great example - I'd also include SpaceHey blogs and Dreamwidth blogs here - there are a lot of indie options and its a great place to maybe try out a new blog idea.

Level 3 - Serious Blog services:
This is your professional blogging software - Wordpress, Medium, Textpattern (more indie than wp - also the one I use), Micro.Blog, Tumblr etc - These often require self-hosting or paid hosting - they are more bloated and less old-weby but can often be themed to fit into your site and offer the most well rounded features - good for frequent complex posts involving lots of text and images etc

So the question you've gotta ask yourself is where do I fit into that scale? From what you've said it sounds like you need your blog to be a bit professional, so Id put you in Level 3 - Plenty of old web people like sadgrl.online use WordPress blogs with their web revival sites, and it might be the easiest option for you - but also shop around a bit - try some of the others in that category and see if they suit you!

[Memory]

An ethical replacement to Wordpress and Medium could also be self hosting a Plume instance, or simply a website where you put static blog entries as plain (X)HTML.

I personally do the latter. Sure, it does not have all the bells and whistles of Wordpress with plugins, statistics and all kinds of sharing/RSS/blah options, but it is accessible, simple, lightweight and free forever.

Like this one:
https://bunbun.de/blog.xhtml

Or my own:
https://libre.town/thoughts/entry_1.xhtml

[Onio]

Ahhh, thank you, Melon and /home/user/, so much for this info! This helps a ton!

I think I'm going to have to create a "Level 3" blog for my work, and then create a static (X)HTML site and blog for fun - I'd love to join this community and I'm having an absolute blast getting lost on these sites. For real, I'm having so many heartwarming moments while surfing these sites.

Also, /home/user/, I love that autumnal leaf background on your blog.

[Memory]

Also, /home/user/, I love that autumnal leaf background on your blog.

Thank you! I think that tiling backgrounds (e.g. super small bitmaps that loop endlessly as a background instead of a large wallpaper that covers the screen with one image) have a certain appeal.

This is an archive of many of these tiled backgrounds. You can spend hours lurking there. =)
http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~duncjo01/archive/patterns/

[Memory]

dreamwidth , notepin.co , and neocities are great blogging options. If you're not confident about your coding skills , I dont recommend neocities . If you want something customizable then dreamwidth is the way to go. Notepin.co is nice , simple , and more modern . Notepin is also part of and indie web project so if you want to support that then notepin is a good option :]].

[fizzylimesoda]

you can use bearblog if you want your blog to load on old browsers (despite the https, which is not supported on very old browsers), or writefreely if you want to have a blog on the fediverse

[starbreaker]

I'd just like to mention that if you want WordPress without Gutenberg, the Block Editor, and the attendant nonsense it might be worthwhile to check out ClassicPress.