I agree. If you want to start a blog use something like Wordpress to get going. If you want to mess around with tech and never actually write anything because you're having too much fun trying out half a dozen static site generators, I like Jekyll.

I think I caught some splash damage off this comment, haha

I settled on Hugo myself

It sounds and looks ideal but it can get costly if you want to do anything non-standard. And by non-standard I mean something as simple as adding a ConvertKit newsletter signup form to your blog, at which point you need a business package that cost non trivial $.

I used to recommend Wordpress.com. I don't anymore. Self hosted Wordpress has its own issues. Even with no plugins, you still have a very real prospect of malware finding its way onto your site if you don't keep everything fully up to date.

Wordpress is not a bad alternative.

Personally I would go with Hugo though. The main reasons for that: a) Native Markdown support – you can store your blog posts in a Git repo. b) Much much easier to write a custom theme for Hugo than for Wordpress.

The CMS part of Wordpress is quite good!

You can use Wordpress (self hosted) as a CMS for a static site with the right plugin.

There are downsides if you do this the free way; anything dynamic stops working if it was a WP module (forms, search etcetera). However, if it's a basic blog, it'll work just fine. SimplyStatic does have a paid version that supports search, and if you need low-volume forms you could probably use JotForm or similar in JS/HTML embed/iframe mode.

Before I switched to static export of WP, I had OTP auth enabled for both the admin and editor accounts. That hasn't changed. I also use a webp plugin that rewrites all image elements (in posts at least) to picture elements; browsers can then pick between the original JPEG or the converted-to-WEBP image. Static export respects this element rewrite.

To enable static exporting, I

* migrated the live site to a new subdomain, * added the Simply Static plugin, * configured SS to not go near wp-uploads - I don't want to double my disk usage, * configured nginx to alias the wp-uploads from the dynamic subdomain to the static site, * configured nginx to HTTP-auth protect the dynamic site - belt/braces approach on top of the existing OTP auth.

I don't care much about publishing from the Wordpress app on my phone, so the HTTP auth hasn't been a problem for me.

Publishing is "create new post, review it on dynamic site, open the SS generate page, click button". It could be automated, but it doesn't bother me enough to do that.

A side-effect is that the blog is never down due to things like Wordpress upgrades (ie, the maintenance page that shows up), because it's not actually powered by WP.

Only if you have a budget for the blog or don't mind displaying random ads to your audience.

The best route is either to roll your own or go with a service like Ghost. Sure, you'll have to pay hosting, but you're not going to have shitty ads run on your blog.

Substack seems to be a decent technology; the problem is that it's owned by Y Combinator, which means it can't be trusted--if you piss off whoever's running YC at the time, you can be suddenly banned and have your data stolen.