[Dionakra]

I did almost the same last weekend. I wanted to start a blog[1] but all options seemed too much for a simple purpose that is a blog. After researching about VuePress, Sapper, Next.js, Gatsby and so on, I finally decided that it wouldn't have any kind of JavaScript. I was tempted to create yet another static site generator, but I am sticking to the old HTML + CSS duo (and, regarding CSS, classless CSS) for my blog. Yes, it has some downsides, but hey, it only needs a text editor and internet connection and the blog is blazingly fast.

[1] https://boix.dev/

[muspimerol]

For ease of maintenance and portability I think markdown is really the king of formats for blog content. Are you writing the posts in HTML? Why are you intermittently using <span> for paragraphs and to wrap other elements?

[Dionakra]

Yep, I am writing the posts in HTML. The reason to avoid Markdown (which I love) and other things is to avoid any kind of building tools. I tried to install Gatsby on a Windows machine and I had several errors. I wanted to remove any dependency on external software. I wanted it to be modifiable with just a text editor and nothing else.

Regarding the use of <span> is because the <p> tag with the chosen CSS leaves too much space after <h*> tags, while <span> doesn't, and as I wanted to just use HTML tags and not create my own version of the CSS, I found <span> the easiest way to achieve that.

[muspimerol]

I definitely understand the desire to avoid a build-time tool. Especially Gatsby is way harder than it should be to get up and running. But for me, portability and data integrity trumps ease-of-publishing. If you want to move your blog to a new system in 5 years, you'll have to migrate a bunch of HTML. If you had the posts in markdown, chances are it would be a plug-and-play with the new system.

That's the reason I pointed out the <span> usage - your source of truth for your data is HTML, but in this case it's already getting mixed up with design-related oddities.

Not bashing your choice for your blog, I think it's reasonable. I just wonder if HTML is the most resilient way to store blog data. It's something I considered a lot when redoing my blog last year.

[d3nj4l]

You can use Jekyll for a JS-less markdown to static site generator.

[asaaki]

Also zola, hugo, and other pretty light weight generators are quite okay. I'm using zola which runs nicely on Win/Mac/Linux. All you need to get started is some theme/template and your blog posts in Markdown. Then enrich it with whatever floats your boat.