[gboudrias]

> Which blog system should we use?

Hosting your own WordPress site? It's simple and easy. Why did anyone ever want to be on Medium in the first place? Most likely for the name association and the visibility that comes with it.

I think we have a responsibility to promote self-reliance as part of technological culture. If we want people to move away from centralization (which I do), we have to teach by example (which I do).

[chipotle_coyote]

It's the visibility, yes. I just moved my various blogging endeavors to one domain (coyotetracks.org) rather than the mishmash I've been using, which includes a few articles on Medium. But with only those few articles, I have over 400 followers on Medium, and my most popular article has 59K reads and 175 recommendations. (The next most popular has 39K and only 10 recommendations, because it's a criticism of "Mr. Money Mustache" and most people are hate-reading it from a link from his web site. Article #3 drops down to a mere 2.3K views, but 51 recommendations.)

I moved to hosting my own WordPress site; as much as I think WordPress's internals are a garbage file (actually, a series of garbage files passed around as globals, but never mind), it's so easy to make work--and the ecosystem is so big--that it almost makes up for its nastiness. But when I write an article that seems "Medium-esque," there's a very good chance I'm going to crosspost it to Medium to attempt to get those views. (With links back to my main web site, of course.)

[Someone]

"Hosting your own WordPress site? It's simple and easy."

I would think that, for at least 90% of those publishing on Medium, that's neither simple nor easy.

Even ignoring that, hosting your own Wordpress site means taking responsibility for keeping it up to date, security-wise. That hurdle alone probably makes most bloggers use some third-party blogging provider.

[gboudrias]

It's just an example, there are many choices, some of which are presumably even simpler.

But yes there will be some responsibility involved, I think that falls into healthy technical culture as well. It's the difference between taking care of something and getting someone else to take care of it. At the end of the day, someone has to do it, and we shouldn't always simply trust others with it just because it's easier.

[fredsted]

WP can update itself though.

[cupcakestand]

Wordpress is for sure powerful, has a huge ecosystem and is for teams a safe bet because of very good and battle-tested workflows.

But sorry, I don't want to setup a stack I did 20 years ago. However, I haven't looked into Wordpress for years.

For simple personal blogs I like DB-free SSG blog systems. But I am still wondering which one is the best. Just Hexo (Node) and Hugo (Go) come to my mind.

[gboudrias]

As I mention in my other reply, I meant it as an example. The issue to me is more "self-reliance" versus "paying others to do it". I'm certain that an increased trend of self-reliance such as hosting your own blog would go a long way towards demystifying the internet and therefore getting people more interested in the very real political issues behind the tech.

[rhizome]

I agree, there's an air of "my gardener moved away, how ever will my grass get cut now?"

[user5994461]

How easy do you think it is? Have you done it?

I found that self hosting wordpress is incredibly complex and expensive.

Wordpress.com does a great job though, nothing to manage.