Recommendations for a simple/easy/beginner static site generator/CMS for a simple blog

General Computing
1

For a non-coder and ideally open source and free (or very affordable like omg.lol)

Looking at:

omg.lol’s Weblog
Bearblog.dev
GitHub Pages
W3 Spaces
Publii
SiteLeaf

Was using Micro.blog, which I love and is awesome, but I can’t afford it or justify the expense currently.

1 Like
2

Would WordPress.com work? From what I understand WordPress is open source and they offer free accounts for blogs and such.

2 Likes
3

Not really. Ideally I want something simple/lightweight/static.

Lot of respect for Wordpress and what Matt has built and love that it is open source but it is way too bloated or feature rich for me.

Thanks for helping thought! :facepunch:t2:

1 Like
4

I’ve experimented with Bear Blog in the past and found it enjoyable to work with.

3 Likes
5

I’ve never heard of Publii, but it looks cool. Maybe it would be a good solution for @oohjeez (Hosting on GitHub Pages or Hostinger?)

1 Like
6

can try

2 Likes
7

I use HUGO its not super super simple but spend a weekend on it and you will figure it out some good tutorials on yoitube for it as well

3 Likes
8

You can have a free static website using Codeberg Pages. If you get into DNS you can even setup your own custom domain name for the website.
Hugo is great if you can learn markdown. You can start with a simple theme, then learn over time to modify it to your tastes.

1 Like
9

Thanks! I will check those out.

1 Like
10

Notable downside to Codeberg Pages is lack of CI/CD. You have to compile your site locally and use a repository for the public files rather than development files. This is in contrast to other hosts that will automatically compile your site and deploy it for you.

1 Like
11

Thanks for helping!

I don’t know what some of that stuff is so Codeberg is probably not for me.

Leaning towards Omg.lol’s Weblog I think.

1 Like
12

I rather like developing on my own machine, and running the Hugo server locally as I make changes to see them in the browser in real time. Then once I’ve done all the changes I want I have a script to “deploy” it to the Codeberg repo (git add/commit/push) which makes it live. I have a separate repo for my source files as well.

13

Anymore thoughts on BearBlog[dot]dev? Seems really neat and simple. Kind of wondering what there business model is to be free but also privacy respecting. I don’t even see anything on their site about pricing tiers or nothing. I’m interested in it as a blogging platform, but I wondering how long it can last or what the commitment to keeping it around is like.

@theprivacydad I saw that you use them for your blog, which is what made me consider it now. How do you like it?

Edit: Nevermind, I do see that they provide options to upgrade to if you want to use your own domain name or more in-depth analytics. Nice.

2 Likes
14

I would go with Publii, which is reasonably easy to use even though it is not as easy as I would have liked when it comes to SFTP connection.

1 Like
15

@InternetGhost @b_blog : I just published an article about my experiences with BearBlog so far:

I’ve also been in touch with the developer of a similarly simple writing/blogging platform called write.as (can be self-hosted too using https://writefreely.org/).

For a non-technical person, I would recommend BearBlog, because I know it and have been using it. The developer always responds to questions and helps out. I still need to try out write.as.

2 Likes
16

Thanks for sharing that!

I will look at Bear again and likely go with it.

1 Like
17

To hosting your static site or serverless code, Check out Cloudflare Workers

1 Like
18

You could try using Jekyll. It generates static web pages, and works out of the box with github pages. Someone also mentioned HUGO, which is good or better, but Jekyll has a lot more themes that you can choose from (http://jekyllthemes.org/, https://jekyllthemes.io/, etc).

1 Like