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Comment by JoshMnem | Hacker News Reader

> "Oh, crap, it’s on Medium."

A general suggestion for programming blogs: instead of Medium, try using something like Hexo[1] or Hugo[2] and deploy for free on Github Pages or Netlify. Publishing content is as easy as `hexo deploy` or `git push origin master`.

You get complete control with a static site generator and can remove things like the sharing bar and animation. There is almost no maintenance required, because the site will be a collection of static HTML files.

[1] https://hexo.io/ [2] https://gohugo.io/

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There's also the good ol' jekyll and my theme Hydejack that I'm gonna shamelessly advertise here: https://qwtel.com/hydejack/

It features a lot of JS that does some pretty wild things (FLIP animations, push-state, touch-enabled drawer menu), but thanks to revolutionary HTML and CSS technology (tongue-in-cheek) all JS is optional and consequently fetching is deferred until after the rest of the page has finished loading.

It's what I'd consider best practice when it comes to publishing on the web: Knock yourself out with all the new JS stuff, but make it optional and put content first.

Thanks for those suggestions. Hugo looks particularly awesome. I've been wanting to spin up a blog so I can write tutorials and such. I actually started building my own web app from scratch for it because I couldn't find a static site generator I actually liked. Hugo, on the other hand, doesn't look like it could be any easier.

I've used Hugo for a few sites now. There is a bit of a hump at the start - finding a theme you like and customising it to your needs. But after that it is fantastic.

I haven't tried it yet, but this looks interesting too: https://posativ.org/isso/

That looks really well done.

I don't think I would use it for my static blog simply because I don't really feel like spinning up a separate server just for comments.

Part of the appeal of a static site generator for me is not having to administrate a server. I can just throw it up on Github or Gitlab pages and be done with it.

I used Hugo recently for a one-off brochure site. It was predictable and straightforward and boring, and generally did what I needed it to do without getting in the way. A+++ five stars would recommend.

> It was predictable and straightforward and boring, and generally did what I needed it to do without getting in the way.

This is usually how I know that a library is well put together.

Pelican (https://blog.getpelican.com/) is also worth a look.

Interesting stuff, thanks

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