Blog on Blot
I want to redo the way I blog. — My old Tumblelog hasn’t seen as many posts lately as I wish: For my taste Tumblr grew too commercial and social-media-like.
So I tried a few blog hosts. I started with the blog hosts my main writing app iA Writer offers tight integration for. Then I came looked at some others as well. Here a list of the platforms I looked at:
| Purpose | Price1 | Markdown? | Tpls? | Imgs? | iA? | Mpub | Bottom line | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ghost | Marketing blog | $25/mth | yes | ??? | yes | no | Not right. Too expensive | |
| Medium | Access limiting | free2 | yes | No | yes | yes | no | Strange model |
| Wordpress | Traditional blog | $5/mth | plugin | yes | yes | yes | no | Outdated. Behemoth |
| Micro.blog | Minimal blog | $5/mth | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | Metadata not in post |
| Blot | Blog via Dropbox/git | $4/mth | yes | yes | yes3 | limited4 | no5 | Winner: Metadata are in post! |
I then decided to tried out Micro.blog and Blot — And now I think I will go with Blot:
- Things I like:
- Use of post metadata!
- Super simple interface.
- David Merfield offers very responsive support
- Clear no-nonsense philosophy behind the service
- Things I (already) don’t like so much:
- No IndieWeb Micropub connection. Would have been nice to post directly from iA Writer plus Micropub seems a good standard in general (e.g. when you want to change your writing client).
- No use of a standard open-source blog engine (like Hugo or Pelican).