Choosing an application for my blog

I was originally going to write a long-winded article about how I searched for an application/platform/framework for my blog that I liked, but I thought that would tax your patience. Here's the distillation of my approach, in the hope that it may be of service to you and save you some time.

First, think about the features you want for your blog.

Thinking about the features will help you narrow down your search. There are a lot of systems out there. In my case, I wanted to have static content with text and maybe some images. No dynamic content. I would like to be able to include code and mathematical symbols in some of my posts. Once a blog post was done and "published," I wouldn't update it. I may write a follow-up note with a reference to the original note. Oh, and it would just be me writing the posts. This pushed me away from content management systems management systems (like WordPress) towards static web sites.

Now, choose a system.

If you've at least decided whether you want static or dynamic web pages, you have made some progress. In my case, I started looking at systems that could generate static web pages because I thought this would save me some time. There are a lot of systems out there, such as Hugo or Gatsby (a rather impressive list of generators can be found on jamstack site). Most systems will include a tutorial to help you get a simple example website running locally, and they often have a showcase of websites built with the system so you can take a look and see if it meets your needs.

In my case, I tried a few static web generators and then incorporated some templates I liked. Static site generators generally take your blog post in a markup format and transform it into a web page. Unfortunately, I found that the templates I chose were incompatible with the version of the generator I was using. I managed to fiddle around and get some working, but others just didn't. It's important to note any problems and imagine how they could affect your blog over time. I found that static site generators forced me to do things in a particular way and felt I was fighting the generator to get what I wanted. In the end, I reconsidered my requirements and concluded I didn't need a static site generator; I could just create my own blog with standard HTML, a simple HTML template for the notes, and some CSS (I chose Tailwind CSS) for styling.

Findings.

In total, I think I spent a few months mystified and confused, searching for a system to build my own blog. Here’s a list of questions that helped me find my solution:

• Do I want a system that generates static or dynamic websites?
• Do I want a system that allows multiple people to edit pages, or just a single person?
• Does the system support the features (e.g., mathematical symbols and code formatting) and layout I want?
• Am I confident I can fix problems if there are breaking changes to the system I choose?

Based on those questions, I decided to create my own web pages, styled with Tailwind CSS. For mathematical formulae, I would use LaTeX and either upload the document or an image of the formula. I’m happy with my solution as I feel I can maintain it.

I hope this note is helpful to you and wish you good luck in your search.