On 18/08/17 06:59, Himanshu Shekhar wrote: > > > On Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 11:59 PM Daniel Pocock <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > > Hi all, > > blogger.com <http://blogger.com> and wordpress are well known > platforms for people to create > free blogs. Github pages have also become popular with developers > recently. > > What are the recommended alternatives for people who want to > adhere to a > more free / libre approach? > > In particular, I'm looking for solutions I can recommend to students > getting into Outreachy and GSoC. They often have a lot of things to > think about during their application and at the start of their project > and need to start blogging quite quickly. > > For now, I'm tempted to recommend github pages with Jekyll static > content generation because at least the git repository (and full > history) behind these sites can be easily migrated to any other > hosting > platform. Are there other alternatives people recommend? > > > Alternatives: Medium, Ghost, Tumblr > > I would recommend for an approach of narrowing down choices. > Do you want a static blog or a dynamic blog? > > Static blog: > The dynamic component of a static blog would come from client side > JavaScript. For extra features/plugins, you'd need to depend on third > party services like Comments (Disqus), Likes (Facebook), > Analytics(Google) which one can easily integrate with static blogs. > However the underlying concept of generating static html from > configuration and templates > > > Dynamic blog: (something you'd perhaps not require) > This is required when you want one or more of the following features: > * Complete control over everything. > * Don't like generating HTML all the time (however Jekyll does that > for you) > * Don't want to depend on external services like Disqus, Facebook, > Google Analytics. > * Want to use/write custom plugins which are available for Wordpress. > > > For most use cases of personal and technical blogs Medium and Github > pages are most suitable. Comparing these two, Github is more compliant > to libre/free ideology.
For GSoC / Outreachy applicants and interns, - a static blog is probably sufficient unless they are really keen on doing interesting stuff with their blog, in which case they will find a solution by themself - the $19 per month charge for Ghost is probably a barrier for people in a lot of the countries where we get applicants
