Mastodawn

asking for a friend: what platform would you recommend for personal blogging?

they would like to avoid dependency on big tech, but need a way for non-technical person to be able to set up crossposting to mainstream social media sites, where their friends and customers are now...

#posse #indieweb

Geffrey van der Bos 2d ago

@hi https://micro.blog ? https://bearblog.dev ? About the POSSE they could try setting up a bridge of some sort: https://indieweb.org/bridge

Micro.blog

Post short thoughts or long essays, share photos, all on your own blog. Micro.blog makes it easy, and provides a friendly community where you can share and engage with others.

@hi I am happy with https://micro.blog

Micro.blog

Post short thoughts or long essays, share photos, all on your own blog. Micro.blog makes it easy, and provides a friendly community where you can share and engage with others.

MercuryCreativeWriterScrew 2d ago

@hi well I use right freely but the kind of sounds like your friend is not ready to avoid dependency on big Tech

@hi ghost (https://ghost.org/) is often promoted as a not shit Substack alternative

BearBlog (https://bearblog.dev/) is another option for text only blogging

Ghost: The best open source blog & newsletter platform

Beautiful, modern publishing with email newsletters and paid subscriptions built-in. Used by Platformer, 404Media, Lever News, Tangle, The Browser, and thousands more.

Ghost - The Professional Publishing Platform

𝙹𝚘𝚎𝚕 𝙲𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚊𝚝 ♑ 🤪2d ago

@hi there is a WordPress as a service at OVH. Not sure if this is to be considered non-big-tech.

https://www.ovhcloud.com/fr/web-hosting/wordpress-hosting/

Hébergeur WordPress

Profitez d’un hébergement adapté pour la création de votre votre blog ou site vitrine WordPress. Installez le CMS le plus populaire en quelques secondes !

OVHcloud

wordpress sounds like overkill for their case.
they probably would like to be able to migrate to static files later.

𝙹𝚘𝚎𝚕 𝙲𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚊𝚝 ♑ 🤪2d ago

@hi ok. They also have "simple web hosting" that is all about using (s)FTP to upload files into an Apache subdirectory - if they’re tech-aware enough.

Note that I have no financial interest in or relation with OVH. It is just the known simple french hosting to go when you’re a french small customer.

Tim Chase 2d ago

I will caution that OVH likes to ratchet up their prices regularly, no "you're on the $N/month plan until you decide to change". I have one of my servers there and it annoys me every year when I re-up and the price has increased. 😑

That said, they run a tight ship with reliable hardware/service, and as loathe as I am to recommend WordPress for such a simple requirement, the ease of WP's "and cross-post this to other social-media-sites" with plugins is unmatched.

@hi @joel what about something like @beasts ?

https://www.mythic-beasts.com/

Mythic Beasts - Mythic Beasts

Managed and unmanaged VPS and dedicated servers, shared web and email hosting, domain registrations and DNS hosting, UK based

nice! first time hearing about it

@hi yeah, I only heard of them quite recently but look good!
I got a basic email server with them, but the web pricing doesn't seem too bad either

@hi Maybe writefreely or bearblog? Not sure if either of those have a way to easily crosspost, but they're the most common blogging platforms I've seen around on the fediverse.

readbeanicecream 2d ago

@hi PageCord is nice. Just not sure about setting up crossposting.

mark hysted 1d ago

@readbeanicecream @hi I use Pagecord and love it. I have echofeed https://echofeed.app set up to post to bluesky and mastofeed https://mastofeed.org to post to mastodon. Both work well. Posting to X is trickier - wordpress to X via buffer free plan is easiest (and free).

EchoFeed - Cross post your RSS feed to Mastodon, Bluesky, Micro.blog, Discord, and more!

Send your posts all over the web

@hi I’m enjoying Micro.blog at the moment. Great for posting to other platforms, but only costs $5 a month. Really easy to get started too.

Dima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱1d ago

@hi personal Mastodon as a blogging site? Some people do this, I think.