Starting a blog has never been this difficult
I feel blogging is making a comeback, why? Because people are starting to realize that they can carve their own brand and be content creators, rather than just sharing your thoughts among few Facebook friends.
And since not all of us are video creators, most people will be selecting blogging as their platform of choice.
I even started my own blog, this one, shifting from Medium, and I hope to have a new year resolution where I will post at least one blog post a week.
However, even if I feel blogging is about to have a come back, a place for bloggers to blog is limited more than ever.
WordPress
WordPress is currently the most popular blogging platform that you can self host or use their own free hosting solution.
WordPress is regularly updated, and the eco system is great, however there is limited number of quality themes that is free and focused on bloggers.
Even WordPress’s own free themes are more focused on business, photographers, restaurants etc.
I feel WordPress is more focused on running a CMS company, and blogging is a side niche that users can use their CMS to build a blog.
Medium
Medium was a great choice when it was initially released. It is still a great place to blog and you can find lot of eye balls on medium looking for your content. And not to mention Medium blogs have a better SEO if you want to please the Google bot.
However, medium has slowly become a walled garden and paywalls. Most of the content they promote on their homepage are from premium users or paywalled content.
Also medium has shifting priorities and directions, for example once issued domain names where you can have your own domain name for you medium blog for free.
Later they made you pay $80, to have a domain name. Now it seems that they have given up the ability to have your domain name, but medium has now started issuing subdomains instead.
This lack of direction makes it very unpredictable for a regular blogger, because you don’t know what will happen to your blog in another 6 months.
Blogger
Google has not made a meaningful update to its blogging platform for years.
It still has the same outdated editor, and the dashboard that blogger currently use has been there for several years without any update.
The third party theme eco system has been also dried up, and google doesn’t seem be to interested in releasing any new themes for the platform.
I believe if it’s not for the ad revenue they are getting from current blogger websites, they would have given up blogger long time ago.
Static site generators
Static site generators have been there for several years, there are different static site generators using different technologies, some use markdown while some are using WordPress as a CMS but generate a static site that you can easily host.
However, static sites are extremely difficult for a regular blogger to host. You need to have a knowledge on some technology like ruby or node to setup your generator, and web designing to setup your site/blog.
Then you need to have knowledge on git or web hosting to host your static site.
That is too much for an average blogger, who just want to tell their ideas. It maybe cool to have a static site if you are a programmer or a web developer, but for an average blogger it’s just too much.
When are we going to have a free, modern easy to use platform focused only on blogging and nothing else, like the experience Blogger offered when it was initially released?
Upcoming platforms
There are some several upcoming platforms that caught my eyes, including SubStack and Write.as
I’m bit confused about SubStack because they call the publications as newsletters instead of blogs. And is it going to focus on newsletters like MailChimp in the future? or focus on blogs like Medium?
And how are we going to know whether any of these platforms will follow what medium did to their uses or may lack a clear focus or direction?
Updates
I initially had a typo which said statistic site generator, which I now corrected to static site generators.
Since I’m typing these posts using my iPad I’m bound to make some mistakes. Even though I try to keep them as low as possible.
Also thank you very much for everyone who commented on HackerNews, I enjoyed reading every single comment.
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