There are times I don’t feel like blogging the hard way1. When that happens, I look to simple, hosted, CMS-based blogging tools.
Recently, I’ve been experimenting with Pika and Scribbles. I like both of them. They are both simple, clean, easy, and inexpensive. Choosing either of them for a blog would be fine.
There is one thing that concerns me a little, and that is the hobby nature of these tools. I don’t mean to be dismissive by calling them “hobbies”, but I can’t help but feel that these kinds of tools are always at risk of being abandoned when their authors’ attention shifts to something new.
This is one reason I no longer use any of Dave Winer’s stuff, no matter how clever. They tend to just go away.
One exception I know of is Blot.im. I’ve been using Blot on and off since 2017. David still updates it regularly and still answers emails quickly whenever there’s an issue.
The Lindy effect applies here, and is worth thinking about when considering new tools.
I’m happy to support these efforts. I subscribe to Blot and have paid for a lifetime subscription to Scribbles. I’m still evaluating Pika. The decision about whether to actually commit to them for my blog is more difficult.
By “hard” I mean having to do everything myself, like with Kirby, Hugo, Tinderbox, etc. ↩︎