Light weight blogging platform

Fallen god · 24 Mar 2014 at 15:35

Hi,

So me and my GF have started developing quiet a few random apps for fun, and we want to blog them and use it in the future as demos of our work and what not. I have had experience with a lot of platforms but there all overcomplicated.

What I'm looking for is something simple, light weight and very customisable front end. Since I have been mostly working on front end work, and will continue so going forward I kind of want to make something that looks very beautiful and modern.

Been trying to theme up WordPress but it is just a bit too complicated.

Big plus for something that just spits out variables and I can just style that on the front end, and not need a lot of logic like WordPress/Drupal.

Currently looking at Ghost which looks decent.

sist_si · 24 Mar 2014 at 23:56

Ghost is really cool IMO. I'd go for that

lokkers · 25 Mar 2014 at 06:36

I quite like Jekyll. You can host for free on GitHub pages too, which means publishing a post is as easy as pushing to a repo.

xbenjiiman · 25 Mar 2014 at 09:32

+1 for Ghost.

Though I'm a big fan of jade, handlebars is a very nice alternative.

visibleman · 25 Mar 2014 at 15:10

Fallen god said:
Currently looking at Ghost which looks decent.

Note that it's Node.js based and a lot of hosts don't support it on shared hosting packages - TSOHost and Vidahost being two (was the case when i asked them a few months back).

Fallen god · 30 Mar 2014 at 22:46

Thanks for the feedback guys. Hosting shouldn't be an issue I will use a Digital ocean and just handle it all on my own, either way it is an afterthought for now, mostly just wanna mess around with it for now.

Handlebar and NodeJS are both things I would like in my tool belt, I have used underscorejs and angular as tempting languages before. Jekyll also looks very cool, I have a friend who forked it and uses it as his CV.

6footgeek · 1 Apr 2014 at 10:52

I really enjoy using Dropplets, http://bit.ly/LPu6Dt

sithlord · 1 Apr 2014 at 15:42

Here are a few more simple ones:

Wolf CMS http://www.wolfcms.org/

Get Simple: http://get-simple.info/

& Concrete: http://www.concrete5.org/

gerico · 8 Apr 2014 at 20:32

I find Jekyll really good. Though mainly because I have some custom plugins that handle some nice markup when I want to do various nice layouts. It's simplicity and scope are lovely, and I have a nice setup where I can push straight to git and my VPS then processes Jekyll and compiles the code in a temp folder than moves the generated site into my live dir. Sweet as!

As said though, Ghost does look good. Not tried it myself, but if you need any help with Jekyll let me know.

Fallen god · 8 Apr 2014 at 21:21

Thanks for the feedback, I have seen a friends site setup in Jekyll that he uses sort of like a CV, it looks very nice and another for a blog it seems really good. I might use that at some points too at which point I will take you up on your offer if I ever get stuck Gerico.

For now Ghost seems great, since I'm more focused on front end development these days Having a site to show I understand Handlebar and NodeJS (I know its serverside but I get the sense that any decent JS developer should understand how to use it at least) seems to be really good.

Out of interest how flexible is the front end for Jekyll.

gerico · 8 Apr 2014 at 21:50

Fallen god said:
Thanks for the feedback, I have seen a friends site setup in Jekyll that he uses sort of like a CV, it looks very nice and another for a blog it seems really good. I might use that at some points too at which point I will take you up on your offer if I ever get stuck Gerico.

For now Ghost seems great, since I'm more focused on front end development these days Having a site to show I understand Handlebar and NodeJS (I know its serverside but I get the sense that any decent JS developer should understand how to use it at least) seems to be really good.

Out of interest how flexible is the front end for Jekyll.

Yeh no problems

— Jekyll is extremely flexible IMO. You can re-arrange your templates however you like, there are really simple template tags to pull in various data. It really is open to being used as you need it. Plus I love writing my posts in markdown.

Deleted member 77746 · 9 Apr 2014 at 10:51

That ghost platform looks fantastic, elegant and simple. A lot of the bloat gone.

NuckyT · 16 Apr 2014 at 14:40

A mate of mine is using 1&1 and his site looks smart. He's not had any problems with them

spenncerr · 18 Apr 2014 at 16:09

NuckyT said:
A mate of mine is using 1&1 and his site looks smart. He's not had any problems with them

Not sure if you work for 1&1 and are just plugging their awful service.

+1 for Ghost.

platypus · 23 Apr 2014 at 14:12

visibleman said:
Note that it's Node.js based and a lot of hosts don't support it on shared hosting packages - TSOHost and Vidahost being two (was the case when i asked them a few months back).

Vidahost now offer support but its £3/month extra. Any ideas why?

Looking to setup a new blog and it looks great.

Hum that droplets linked above looks pretty awesome.

visibleman · 23 Apr 2014 at 14:29

platypus said:
Vidahost now offer support but its £3/month extra. Any ideas why?

Similarly Tsohost are doing the same along with charging £6/month to add Node.js to your cloud hosting which is a little steep.
Although at least Tso are doing Ghost hosting at £2.99/month which isn't too bad.