I’ve wanted a proper personal blog for a while, but making one has to become a whole journey for me.
It started pretty simply. I had a little page on Codeberg that was basically just one HTML file.
It worked, but obviously I eventually started wanting something a bit more practical. I wanted to actually write things without opening an HTML file every time, so I started looking into static site generators.
That’s how I ended up trying Hugo.
Hugo is great. I can see why people love it. It’s fast, flexible, has a huge ecosystem and all that good stuff.
I just didn’t really like the workflow.
Maybe it’s just me, but I kept feeling like I was spending too much time thinking about the machinery around the blog instead of the actual writing. I wanted something where I could just log in, write something, publish it, and then disappear.
So I started looking for something else.
And somewhere along the way, I decided that the obvious solution was to write my own CMS.
Yes, I know.
I could have just used an existing one.
Instead, I started writing a PHP-based CMS because I enjoy creating problems for myself.
It was actually pretty fun for a while. I learned a lot from it, and I still have the project sitting around somewhere. But it had its own problems, and eventually I abandoned it.
Maybe I’ll continue it someday. I still have some ideas for it, and I’m not completely convinced I’m done with it yet.
After that, I found Textpattern.
And this one finally clicked for me.
It’s FOSS, PHP-based, lightweight, and ridiculously customizable. I can mess around with the templates, CSS, structure, plugins and basically everything else without having to completely redesign my workflow around the software.
More importantly, it feels like a blogging system.
I can just write.
That was basically what I had been looking for this entire time.
There’s one other thing I should mention: I’m currently short on money, so buying another domain just for a personal blog wasn’t really something I wanted to spend money on.
Luckily, I already have a domain through my company, Zist Digital, so I decided to use that instead.
Maybe I’ll get a separate domain eventually. For now, this is good enough.
So after going from a single HTML file, to Hugo, to trying to build my own CMS, I somehow ended up here.
A FOSS blogging platform running on my company’s domain.
And I’m pretty happy with it.
Now I just need to actually write something.