With the start of the new year, I thought I’d party like it’s 2006 and start a blog. I don’t expect a big audience but I hope I can help someone by documenting some of my projects.
I have set up and run WordPress blogs but have felt like they seemed too complicated at this point to easily understand what goes on under the hood. I wanted all the typical blog features, nice theme designs to start from, an admin console and WYSIWYG editor, and flat file organization and storage. I looked at a bunch of “flat-file” CMS (content management software) systems:
- PicoCMS seemed simple and stores content as Markdown files with YAML metadata on top. Themes use twig templating. No admin interface? Markdown only, no WYSIWYG editor?
- Bludit themes look nice and had all the features. Articles are stored in JSON files instead of Markdown but you can edit Markdown if you want. WYSIWYG editor.
- Grav has everything but might be getting too complicated – add-ons cost $25-$100
- Serendipity has been around for a long time. Most themes have that older blog look but some newer ones are okay. Seems like development has slowed .
Ultimately I decided that PicoCMS might be too simple and the themes were clunky looking, so I went with Bludit. We’ll see how it goes.
Bludit Update 2/7/2022
I have been using Bludit for a while now and find myself constantly losing work. If the post editor is left open it will time out and even if you think you saved all your changes will be gone. Autosave doesn’t seem to work reliably and there is no way to recover the auto-saved post – you have to cut and paste the content. I think I need to look around some more, Grav is still a good choice and it’s worth paying for features that work well.