I think I need to move my shitty blog from wordpress.com to some semi-hosted thing where I can use plugins and chuck stuff in folders. Does anyone have a recommendation? It's low enough traffic that I don't need anything fancy.
@will all the hip blogs I see these days are using static generation from Markdown source stored in a git repo, or they're ghost.io…
@will Digital Ocean has its Droplets Marketplace. It’s a one click install and I think it’s $4/5 per month.
@mathowie Thanks Matt. Will check it out. I was shocked that WP.com gates plugins behind a $25/month plan.
@kitroed Ghost.io is kind of interesting, but seems like overkill. The static site generators are neat, but they've always been really fragile when I use them.
@will I’ve had great experiences with (self-hosted) Ghost.io blogs.
Straightforward to set up, lovely to write in, and pleasant to administer. They’ve also been adding great features in their recent updates.
@hils I don't really want to fool with self-hosting. When I do that, I tend to just noodle with the backend and never get around to posting. Their hosted plans are pretty robust though. I might set up for a month and see how hard it would be to port my stuff over
@will I have pressable which I like but is pricey. I also have a dreamhost account which is adequate for low traffic things.
@will We recommend #Processwire which @chcs is happy to set for you. https://www.chcs.com/portfolio/
@will I hear ya, I routinely get myself into the exact same boat. For what it’s worth, I’ve actually found it requires pretty darn minimum (obligatory) tinkering on a $5 DO droplet. Can’t speak to their hosted option, personally.
I’ve had success porting from Wordpress with these steps: https://ghost.org/docs/migration/wordpress/
@will WP Engine is good but they don’t really have a plan in the personal site price range. Flywheel, which was acquired by WP Engine a few years ago, is also pretty good and has a decent $15/month option: getflywheel.com/pricing/
@will I moved to Hostinger a few weeks ago for my WordPress and I'm pretty impressed. Import was quick and my modest blog is running way faster than it did before.
I did use a black friday offer but it seems like they do them often. There is a steep jump in price after the intro offer though. I took the risk and bought a long term plan at the reduced price .
@will I just host a static Jenkins website on GitHub for free. Want to add a post? Adding a post is essentially making a commit to the git repo with a new markdown file in the posts folder.
@will Linode , they are amazing and have a marketplace for anything you want to spin up, moved my partner’s WP site there never looked back !
@will I self-host WordPress on Namecheap hosting (just the cheapest plan, about $40 a year, but the first year may be cheaper). It's worked fine for me so far with the plugins and themes I've tried.
@electricburgers @will Thanks! Micro.blog does have plug-ins and custom themes using Hugo. And ActivityPub and a bunch of other things. For the “stuff in folders”, that might depend on what you need… Good luck finding the right host!
Tons of good recommendations for folks. I'll dig into them later this week and let you all know what I end up settling on.
@will My website/blog is made with Gatsby JS. I use markdown for my posts. There is also ghost which I considered.