Searching for a distraction-free, simple, yet effective blog editor/hosting platform I landed with write.as.
I have started, and abandoned, more Wordpress blogs than I can remember, so this time around I knew that wasn't the right choice. I always get overwhelmed by all the options and each time I want to write the perfect article with all the images and links and comments and categories and tags and taxonomies and...
So, it wasn't going to be WP.
Then when searching for “simple blog site software” I found a lot of suggestions for static site generators, such as Grav and Hugo. The thing is when I'm writing I don't want to think about Markdown, or committing code, or builds, I certainly don't want to set up any GitHub Actions or Docker containers.
I just want to write!
Write.as is based on WriteFreely which is Open Source, so if I'm ever inclined, I could set up my own instance — or join another one (though Wordsmith isn’t open to new accounts at the moment). It’s got RSS, Email updates, a custom domain, even a connection to the Fediverse.
This is the free trial, so if I like it I do have to pay for it eventually — but compared to the cost of hosting it myself and the investment in time for setup and maintenance, I think it kinda levels out. It’s not that I can’t set up my own server, deployment, pipeline, and all that. It’s just that I really don’t want to. Writing comes from another part of my brain, I guess. Not that DevOps isn’t creative in its own way.
That’s all to say — this is my new dev blog. Will I keep this one updated? Stick around and we’ll find out together!