D’ya ever grow weary of thinking about blogging and blogging software and blogging workflows and blogging culture? No? Me neither. Not normally, anyway, but it’s happening now.
I’ve been having a blast testing Kev Quirk’s new blogging platform, Pure Blog. He’s done a great job of nailing the basics. It’s easy and fun to use. So fun, in fact, that I’ve been teetering on using it for this blog at baty.net.
Sometimes I just want a CMS.
Static blogs using Markdown files are great, but I like to post a lot of images, and SSGs make that more difficult. I’ve scripted a few things to help, but nothing beats a nice drag-and-drop UI.
It’s been a relief using Pure Blog for a few days. Here’s the thing, though, once I start considering going back to using a CMS, why not go all the way and use WordPress or Ghost (probably Ghost)? That’s what I’ve been spiraling about for a few days. Am I going to be satisfied with something as simple as Pure Blog, when Ghost has analytics, comments, fediverse integration, etc.? I don’t know, maybe?
If I do decide to change platforms, again, I need to deal with migrating thousands of posts. This is made more difficult by having changed platforms a dozen times, already. My Markdown files have all kinds of slightly different front matter; some YAML, some TOML. Some have “featured” images, some don’t. It’s a mess.
I was considering archiving the baty.net again and starting fresh. That feels like crazy talk, but I can’t help thinking about it. Wouldn’t it be nice not lugging all this legacy cruft around? Except, it would break a lot of links. It’s not like my posts are linked to that often, but they are linked to. Seems rude.
Another option is to use one of my other domains. Baty.blog is a good candidate. That’s currently running on Blot but I’d archived that blog before. There’s always copingmechanism.com.
Thing is, if I don’t continue using baty.net for my primary blog, I’ll lose a ton of readers. Baty.net is my blog, and not many folks are likely to update their RSS feeds just to follow me around. Part of me doesn’t mind, but I don’t love the idea.
You see how it is? I have a love/hate relationship with blogging workflows. My mood changes too often and it ruins each carefully crafted setup. It’s a good thing there’s a love portion of the equation.
Sooo, anyhoo, that’s where my head is, this morning. I’m going to be out for a while today, and when I return I would like to make the call. Stay tuned.