I used to write some blogs (not much) on Medium, but Medium has many limitations I don't like. So, I asked myself, can I have a own self hosted blog? Yeah, let me start.
Where to host: Cloudflare
I have bought a Domain Name: pipisoft.tech sometimes before, but leave it asleep after then. So now, it is time for it to come back to service.
About where to host my blog, I chose cloudflare.com, because it has a good free tier for Cloudflare Pages and free HTTPS certificate.
So, I host my blog by using cloudflare's free service, instead of paying some SaaS service every month.
Software to generate static site: Hugo
I evaluated Hexo and Hugo. Both are good open source projects for static site generation.
But I used Hugo, because:
- Hugo is more lightweight
- I found a good Hugo theme: Clean White Theme for Hugo, and I like its simplicity and clean.
- Hugo also support Org Mode file format, so that I don't need to use Emacs Org Mode to convert .org file to markdown format
So, I followed Cloudflare's Deploy a Hugo site to setup my blog, and also the CI/CD pipeline. This is also very convenient, so that after I write my post in Org Mode format, I just commit and push it into github. And wait several seconds, My post go to online.
The last issue: add comments support
What I missed most for Medium writing platform is the communication interaction between author and readers.
After some search, I found the most popular blog comment hosting service is: Disqus, but its free version has several limitations, for example, the HTTP request site overhead is very large, plus it display advertisements, which is really unacceptable for me.
Luckily I found Cusdis: Lightweight, privacy-first, open-source comment system. It also has a free hosted service. As it turns out, it works greatly for me. It doesn't require my readers to sign in any system to leave comments.
Now, it is time for me to keep writing!