Blog and static sites - what tool to choose?

Blog and static sites - what tool to choose?

If you want to create your own blog - you need to choouse from some cool existing solutions.

I provided short list of these solutions when i was choosing which platform will be more convenient for me.

Hugo

Hugo is a generator of static site. It's written on Go (respect from me as Golang-developer). You should create your own git repository, install Hugo, choose visual theme (https://themes.gohugo.io). Next you can create .md Markdown files, write content in it and run hugo command - it will create static html/css files. These files next you can host by Github pages, Vercel, nginx or other ways. 2nd version of my blog was made with Hugo and it's cool tool.

Gatsby

Gatsby is another static site generator written on JS. It uses React and SSR under the hood. I have not tried it, but read many good reviews from users.

Wordpress

Wordpress is widely used CMS (content management system) and it has many features based on hundreds of plugins. You can create full-functional blog, forum, landing page, shop or other types of sites. But it also has some security issues and almost all cool plugins require paid version.

Ghost

Ghost is blog platform. It is written on JavaScript and requires database (MySQL) to use. It also offers many features besides blog posts: free and paid membership, email letters, custom pages, changing visual themes. It has very convenient editor for blog posts. As disadvantage i can point that Ghost works only with Stripe for paid memberships and Stripe isn't available for some countries like Kazakhstan.

Another way - create account in popular social network like Facebook, LiveJournal, Linkedin or forum like vas3k.club. With this way you can get first readers and subscribers very fast because social network already has many users. But as disadvantage - your content is not realy "yours". Social network can delete your account or post at every moment based on strange rules or moderator's personal mood. You cannot export your content to one file for backup. Forums also doesn't allow you to create anything that you want. For example my favorite forum vas3k.club clearly took a course on simpler everyday stuff rather than on technical topics. In some cases I even got messages from moderators: "this topic doesn't match the club's course, go the chat".

What tool I chose?

My very first version of blog was built on Wordpress. But I couldn't create a design that suited me. Then i recreated new version on Hugo with Github Actions. Although i am a developer and can work with Git it was very inconvenient for me - every time when i want to create new post or edit existing - go to IDE, edit markdown, git commit & git push... It's so tired. I wanted only to login as admin, edit some text in something like Word or Google Docs and press Publish. Finally current version of my blog/personal site is created on Ghost and now it suits my needs.
So in a dispute "host your posts on personal website / host it in a social network" i choose both. All my posts (maybe except something like "Congrat me, i got new certificate") will be listed on my personal site, but main of their will be posted on Linkedin as my main social network for career now.