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!

[Guest]

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.

[Guest]

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/