What are my options for a self-hosted, no-bloat super basic blogging platform that is easy to set up for a non-developer?
I'd prefer to self-host so I can retain my stuff indefinitely. Also, what's the cheapest hosting option that doesn't suck? AWS?
Mostly just want the ability to write and post. Dont even need categories, tags, or comments. Just a minimal layout with a page that lists the articles and the article itself.
Ghost is a very good blog cms. Can run it through digital ocean on a $5/mo droplet.
I second this! I was a little disappointed with the lack of visual customisation on Ghost, but it is just so much faster than Wordpress to set up, write, publish...etc. I also use a $5/mo droplet from Digital Ocean and the performance / site speed is great 👍
WordPress is probably the best choice. You can just pick a minimal theme, no plugins and turn off comments.
More reasons to use WordPress:
As @alchemist said, out of the box no plugins is perfect for the minimal setup you need right now. But you’ll always have those plugins available as options for the future.
I’d second this suggestion. A properly formatted WP installation is pretty stable, simple, and flexible.
I’ve been looking for alternatives for smaller blogs for probably a decade now, but none have really made the cut. Statamic is by far the best but it comes with a hefty price tag.
I am a developer and I use GatsbyJS everyday so I am biased.
With WordPress, you will find easy one-click install on many hosting providers.
There are probably easy one-click solutions for Ghost... I would go with that instead of WordPress to avoid the bloat and get better performance out of the box.
If you would like to avoid paying for hosting, don't want the maintenance burden of running a server and/or may like to tinker with your site at some point, I would loudly suggest giving a to with static site generators (SSGs). There are easy one-click solutions as well and you get to keep everything online at no cost and with zero maintenance for decades to come.
One big advantage is also portability. A widely common approach to blogging with SSGs is writing in Markdown files and publishing them as HTML on your site. That means you don't need a database and if you want to take your content elsewhere at some point, you just need to copy and paste your files.
I could go on and on about SSGs so just ask if you have more questions. I'd gladly answer them.
Examples of one-click solutions to check for SSGs: JAMstack Themes and Stackbit
Alternatively, if all you want is write somewhere and don't care at all about styles, why not just write Mardown files in Github?
(Again, ask all you want about that option)
I'm a developer as well and interested in SSGs. What about commenting and spam prevention?
commenting:
you have got a few options. From the top of my head, Disqus is a popular solution or Webmentions is a web standard you can implement with webmention.io for example.
spams:
Ghost and Vultr.
Find a nice free template and you're good to go.
Ghost on DigitalOcean for $5/mo might be easier to set up for a non-developer from the marketplace.
I second this. Ghost is a valid option. Grav is another option you could look at.
Thanks, will check it out. Seen Ghost a while back but haven't heard of Vultr.
Vultr is a host. Ghost isn't easy to run if you're not comfortable with command line and managing a server.
We built a homegrown blog platform that is lightweight and uses AWS s3 as a CMS. Has no editor, but uses MSword, and conversion to txt file. Requires programming to build the platform in RoR.
I know you said you prefer to self-host, but if you'd like to at least check a hosted solution, svbtle sounds exactly like what you've described.
As others said, WordPress is very easy to set-up, can run well on the cheapest servers and if at some point you want to add extra functionality you can always add plugins for anything from analytics to social sharing or payments.
Ghost has worked very well for me. I use it at blog.nhost.io that will soon be serving nhost.io/blog through NextJS.
If you want to put a little bit more time into it, you can learn https://www.gatsbyjs.org/.
Then you can host it for free using https://pages.github.com/, https://www.netlify.com/ or https://zeit.co/.
A much simpler and easier (but also somewhat less-flexible) option is VuePress.
I see lots of people taking one of my Jekyll themes and hosting for free on GitHub Pages or Netlify – both are great easy setups, and free, and Jekyll is an awesome, flexible platform to use.
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