I migrated from Wordpress to Middleman for my blog [0], but wanted to have a web UI for writing and editing blog posts so I wrote my own [1]. Here's a screenshot [2].

I also didn't want to lose all the comment history so I wrote another gem [3] for Disqus-like comments, which are loaded via AJAX given that the website is completely static.

I haven't gotten around documenting the gems but hope to do sometime this month!

[0] http://bootlog.org [1] https://rubygems.org/gems/artifact [2] https://twitter.com/tomaspollak/status/753728789679529985 [3] https://rubygems.org/gems/cachai

Like this one from your blog: "Y ahí empezaba la magia y los sonidos galáticos del módem."

Since it's a fully static site, I have Nginx serving it directly on a $5/mo DO server, along with a bunch of other crap. Static sites are great because they need almost nothing from a server for hosting.

Also, the site style is heavily inspired by [2].

[0] https://psbarrett.com/ [1] https://github.com/azdle/virgil [2] http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

I generate the static html and then put them inside a docker container to deploy. The host is a bare metal server (not free but cheap) with docker installed.

Both of these blogs use Jekyll + Docker as described above:

- http://blog.nimbleci.com/

- http://blog.emmetogrady.com/

I used to use github for hosting but I wanted to have SSL so I moved the blog to my UPS.

1: https://middlemanapp.com/

1) the ease of publishing on various platforms is a limitation.

2) the load time of the website is high.

The platforms (Wordpress.com, Ghost(Pro), Blogger, etc) will probably handle massive spikes better. With something like CloudFlare, I think you can mitigate a lot of that though.

I've also been happy with Tumblr in the past — there's no self-hosted version available, but hosted is free. I like Ghost's writing tools better, but Tumblr's media tools are far more full featured and battle tested from years of tons of users.

Also, I found it limiting to publishing code in Tumblr.

I personally run a DIY-thing, but that's not because I necessarily think that is a good idea ;) If I weren't using that I'd either use a static site generator of some kind or pay for Wordpress.com.

edit: cost me ~20 USD a month for the managed server.

In my case the big inconvenience is that I spend more time developing/improving it than actually writing articles.

I was only wary about using existing tools like ghost, WP etc since it involves setup, updates and configurations and the learning is pretty minimal - didn't think the ROI was high.

It took a few years (about a decade, really) to get the design right - people's perception is a weird thing, what looks nice to me is an abomination to most, and i usually got about one piece of feedback per year.

That's probably the biggest argument i can give against going DIY with web design.

I've had a few game servers self-hosted (in the "PC-under-the-table" sense), and i would really advice to get a real hosting for such things - every time the internet is acting up or you try something that needs parts from the server box, someone would ping you on Skype about why the server is down. :/)

[1] http://orbides.org

How about the page load times ?

I'm using Medium, it has limited features, but it's the best out there if you're just looking for something simple. Quality of posts in Medium as a community is better than MOST blogging platforms out there.

The ecosystem (primarily the number of really nice themes) and the fact I've been using it for years just means it's the simplest option.

I'd probably never self-host it again for anything important, though. Too much configuration / update / tweaking / security / etc / etc time.

+ Instant access to Medium userbase.

+ Solid SEO as the site is spidered so much quicker than any blog I've ever had.

+ Nice layout and easy to read.

- I don't own the content.

- If Medium closes, so does my blog.

https://medium.com/me/export