Making My Online Space
I have wanted my own place online for a while. I had been tinkering with some self developed things, but recently just I wanted to jump in and start. So off I went looking for some hosted solutions. But where do I start? What do I want out of this space? What fun features, styles, pages do I event need? What do I even have to say online?
The Basic Requirements
I have been a computer fan for a while, but I am looking to branch out. A place to write about projects I do and things I’m thinking sounds appealing to me. I want something that is:
- Simple
- I want my main goal here to be writing about, not constantly fixing and tweaking the site.
- Customizable
- I want the site to feel like mine, not a corporate website.
- Community
- It would be nice if it had a way to connect with other people, though maybe federating could be the way to go?
- Easy to Export (Or, a bonus, self-hostable)
- I want to make sure my writing and blog structure are sound, so if I ever move hosts, nothing is lost.
- Not-so-expensive
- Support for more than one site, since I want a private one for friends and family as well.
Picking a Home
Neocities
I started this search after finding Neocities. It is my initial inspiration for wanting my own site. Everyone there is building these amazingly intrecate websites, with a vibe and a community that seems fun. (See Melonking, Lazer Bunny, Irony Machine).
I tried. I made an account, and started hacking away. After a while, I found that it was hard. Like, I’m doing web dev again! Plus, since nothing is set up for you, any feature you setup will be on you to keep and maintain. I need something with more features.
BUT if you want a site with maximum control, and maximum tweaking potential, this is for you!
Obsidian Publish/Quartz
I do all my writing and note taking in Obsidian. They offer a service called Obsidian Publish, which allows you to host your notes as a website. This sounded super neat! I looked at a bunch of example sites, and a lot of them looked less like personal sites and more like wikis... which in hindsight, makes a lot of sense. Plus
I also investigated self hosting Quartz, which is very similar to Obsidian Publish. I found it cumbersome to integrate with my existing vault, and kinda weird to self host. It also felt harder to customize, but maybe I haven't looked deep enough into it. Either way, this method didn’t give me the nice feeling I was looking for in a personal site.
BUT if you’re looking for a cool way to host a personal wiki, these are great tools.
Bear
I found Bear through some blogs I found on hacker news, and I really like their ideals and simplicity. I can just spin up a blog, and start writing. However, the customization options are amazing. Custom css/html/js is pretty neat but not required, which is a good middle point for me. I haven’t really talked about pricing, but it is a similar price to others for the premium level, but with that I get 10 blogs! More than enough. Bear impressed me. Plus the discover page is cute! I find myself stopping by there to look for new posts.
Really, the only things bear doesn’t have is a self hosting option nor federation features. However, since it’s all markdown, it would be trivial to move to another platform. And federation, I think, is still in its infancy, so this is a pretty niche feature.
I’m going with Bear!
Next step: Customization
I’m going to toy around with customizing and tweaking here for the next couple of weeks and I’ll likely make a part 2 documenting what I did. Hopefully I don’t go too crazy….
If I’m missing something about these platforms, or one a platform didn’t consider… or you just wanna say hi, feel free to shoot me an email!