Blogging is old-school now! You can create channels on Youtube, Instagram stories, podcasts, you can live stream on Twitch, Clubhouse, you can even write paid newsletters on Substack! But… I like retro things…
For my blog revival, I explored different tools to create and maintain a blog. Many solutions are available for developers and DIY persons.
Today, my total cost to get my blog up and running is free. I just need to pay for a domain name and I found one super cheap at $3 per month because it has a strange extension: .co.
To start a blog you need 3 things:
- a domain name (namecheap.com, domain.com, godaddy.com)
- a host: where you store your website (Github pages, AWS, Notion, Ghost)
- a technology: how you build your pages (Hugo, Jekyll, no-code)
Why use a domain name?
- To get all the hard-won traffic and SEO associated with your own domain name.
- To not confuse your audience with different domains.
- No hidden advertisement.
No code with Notion
Without any hesitations, I would recommend to people with no code experience to consider Notion for their blogging platform.
Notion offers a no-code solution to publish webpages. For $5 per site per month, you can get your blog on your own domain name. This is a great way to start and you can focus on creating quality content regularly.
A minimalist personal website: https://mariohayashi.com
Another one: https://jodieloi.com
Total monthly cost of Notion: $4 (best case) for the domain name + $5 for Notion = $9 per month
No code with Ghost
Ghost is THE alternative to WordPress: everything is better! It is lightning fast and safe. The integrated interface is great to manage content (CMS).
Ghost is a non-profit and they are trying to change the way we create and consume content. They are offering new ways to monetize content for serious bloggers: articles behind a paywall and paid newsletters. Writers can focus on creating content while readers can enjoy genuine content without hidden advertisements.
Total monthly cost of Ghost (no code): $4 for the domain name + $29 per month but there is no percentage taken on the paid subscriptions = $33 per month
Ghost is open-source, so developers can use it on an external CDN. DigitalOcean has a pre-built ghost image set up that is working well for $5 per month and the simplest version of AWS Lightsail costs around $3.5 per month.
Total monthly cost of Ghost (developer edition): $4 for the domain name + around $4 for hosting = $8 per month
Hugo (for developers)
Hugo is the static website generator I used to create this blog. It is very light and minimalist.
I host my website on Github pages for free. Traffic is limited, so if my blog is too successful I would need to migrate my blog to AWS for example.
Total monthly cost of Hugo (developer edition): $4 per month for the domain name
Here is the ressource I used to set up my website: https://www.mytechramblings.com/posts/create-a-website-with-hugo-and-gh/
Every time I want to update my blog, I run the following commands:
hugo --theme lithium
cd public
git add *
git commit -m 'Add a new post'
git push -u origin master
Jekyll (for developers)
Jekyll is very similar to Hugo, it is a free static website generator. Its main advantage is its integration with Github pages.
I decided to move from Jekyll to Hugo for non-rational reasons 👸: Hugo seems lighter, cleaner and I found a theme in Hugo that I really like.
Total monthly cost of Jekyll (developer edition): $4 per month for the domain name
I hope that this post will give you new ideas. When I did my research, I was surprised to read a lot of recommendations for outdated solutions! Of course, I have a lot of bias towards minimal, clean, DIY solutions for blogging, so keep that in mind when you read my post 💆♀️!