My Website Setup

Static Site Generators #

For ages I resisted static site generators. I couldn’t wrap my head around the complexity of them, or why I would need one. But then, I got to know the indie web, aka, the small web. The movement of people going back to focus on their own websites, owning a domain name, and publishing content on your website then out to other services, aka POSSE - Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. I always wanted to keep that motto all these years, but kept jumping around from a social blog to another social blog, to Wordpress, and back. Now I’ve landed on micro.blog, but even want to avoid using that in the future if I can help it. It helps save a few bucks a month as well as learn the intricacies of static site generators.

Tinkering #

Since micro.blog is built with Hugo, I went back to trying to learn it. I first edited my micro.blog theme with the custom editor, and then decided to give Hugo a try on my own. Lo and behold, it finally “clicked”. I tried a couple of themes, and then landed upton this one, named Blowfish. It’s so awesome! It’s incredibly customizable and helped me learn so many details about Hugo. I then was able to push my git repo to Netlify and have it hosted there for free! I’m super happy that I’m able to finally have a digital garden (cafe) and blog on my own domain, not worried about a major service going down, an acquisition, or paying a ton of money for hosting each month. I hope I can keep it running for a while and never go back to hosting again (unless they offer something that I couldn’t resist). Next up, I’ll try to import old posts.

Thanks for reading!