The majority of people use mainstream social media to share content. On the other spectrum we have technical people on the indieweb and the old web who self host their own servers/apps. Most of us became developers due to the fact that we didn;t have the easy drag and drop systems of today. But this also means that the current systems fail to produce adequate developers.
Blogging / Note taking manifest
What I want from a blog/note taking system
- Easily extendible to add new features
- Easy to write down ideas without distractions. Don’t know how to name your file or which url to use? No problem.
- Easy to configure
- Future Proof Format - So I won’t lose it in 20 years. SQLite + markdown or asciidoctor should be considered
- Self Hosted
The Principles
The blogging software I discuss here is ordered by the following principles, always from easier to more complex:
- From zero technical knowledge to more extensive knowledge required
- Simplicity of features
- Hackability of the system
- It adheres to my 3 self hosted principles namely: 1 SIngle binary, SQLITE DB (or other flat file DB), no external or minimal dependencies. This means that most javascript, python, (90%+ of solutions) do not pass this principle.
- SOmewhat lightweight and resource friendly, so that you can run 20 apps on 1 single 1GB ram VPS like I’m doing, most software nowadays is way too bloated.
- OPTIONAL: easy indieweb interfacing with a minimal set of features such as indieauth, microformats, activitypub (very optional) - interconnecting websites
The Blogging Software
- WriteFreely - Minimalist blogging. This is the easiest to get started and just write and publish. It’s also easy to self host - 1 golang binary, somehwhat OK to extend, great for allowing friends and family to have their own blogs. It supports activitypub.
- ZenDenPen - Free Online static site editor/builder - It has a code editor
- CreativityNook - The basic website editor I built for ZenDenPen - INcludes multiple subdomains support out of the box if you want to self host.
- GoBlog - A very lightweight markdown dynamic blog platform with Microformats, indieweb, activitypub support baked in. Easy to extend with, you’ll need to fiddle around to see how it works. SelfHosted only
- Hugo - “The world’s fastest framework for building websites” Hugo is a static site generator, you can use it together with ZenDenPen or standalone. Hugo is amazing but it does require some knowledge to setup and it’s not for the faint of heart, this is why I recommend everyone start off with zendenpen and then work towards integrating Hugo. Since it’s static it does not acti
- I had developed a few note taking systems in Elixir, TCL, PHP and Golang, most recently FlowNotes but these are now unmaintained
Sure, there are others but I now view them as more complex and/or not having the features I like: Markdown support, easy extensible, not relying on too many features.