You probably don’t need a Wordpress blog, or a hosted website on Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly. I need to specify that you in this context is a human person, not a corporate thing with machiavellian corporate needs. Just a human that has a desire to publish musings on this great big thing called the internet.

You likely don’t need to have comments. Let the comments be on another platform like Facebook, Twitter, email or wherever else you waste your life away. You don’t need javascript or Google Analytics. You don’t even need a contact page form, there are already so many ways to get in contact¹.

What you need is a static site generator, a text editor, and a web host with cheap object storage. This could be Hugo, Sublime Text, and Amazon S3. This could be Jekyll, notepad, and Github pages.

Maybe also a friend who has set this up before. Let them do the initial set up to save yourself confusion. You’re welcome to start with a clone of this site.

What you don’t need is for Weebly to go out of business, your Wordpress site to get hacked, and Wix to up their prices year after year. You don’t need your content stranded on a dieing platform, paywalled, or competing with obtrusive ads for your readers' attention.

You might need to know a little markdown, it’s really not that hard. To figure out deployement, typically a script. To choose a theme, one that feels right. To choose a domain, one that is memorable yet relevent.

But the hardest part of all; what are you going to say on your website?

• hugo