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Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

I just moved to write.as from Medium and it's great. Primarily because it's $1 a month hosted, I can use my own domain and there is literally zero clutter in either the drafting page or the display page.

No customization aside from fonts and some light markup makes it really clean.

Example: https://write.as/andrewkemendo/relative-complexity-and-impor...

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why to pay for a platform if everyone could use github static pages and just publish by git commit?

1. That is more complex than I want it to be for blogging

2. I'd rather support independent creators than MSFT

3. It's faster cheaper than if I hosted it myself

4. Github isn't designed for reading

etc...

because on github everyone sees when I make stupid commits to fix my stupid typos

pro tip: squash (rebase) your commits then force push to remove "fix typo" history

An even "proer" tip: rebase your commits into something coherent BEFORE pushing, and you can drop the "force".

pro tip: be careful in using force push. In the past there's a version of git where it defaults to force all your local branches into the remote copy. When I did use force push, it pushed everything including my outdated local copy of PROD. Fortunately we were able to fix this before somebody else ran a git pull.

the new versions I believe are configured safer now afaik.

aren't private repos free now?

For some reason Pages must still be backed by a public repo for free accounts.

On Gitlab you can host pages backed by their free private repos, and also if required you can use their free integrated CI to run any static site generator build step you might have.

It's a really good plaform for hosting a blog for free with the 'publish on git push' workflow mentioned above.

Here are some more details about it https://about.gitlab.com/2016/04/07/gitlab-pages-setup/ and https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/pages/introduction.h...

* There is a free-tier of Write.as that is perfectly functional

* Support open-source developers

* It is simply more convenient than creating MD files, editing, and then committing them

I set up a Jekyll blog using Gitlab + Netlify CMS, and while that's OK, it still isn't as simple as I wish it were.

Thanks for the recommendation. Btw, I enjoyed your brief intro into building complex systems. I'd love to read more. I'll check out your blog.

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