It has been years that my own personal blog has sit on top of a database. I mostly use static websites, only, exclusively for my own content. My sites are built from markdown files. In the past I tried Jekyll with the awesome “Minimal Mistakes” theme. For a very brief period, I tried hugo and did not like it much (it felt complex). I have settled down with Quartz for now.
Why, might you ask do I use static websites? Because it has advantages that I love. Once you have used these, to host Wordpress would look like a nightmare to you for your own sake!
What are the advantages? Here they are:
- They are how the web was originally imagines - as a set of HTML files.
- They have no database to maintain. No need to backup, test the health of the DB, check for upgrades etc.
- They are amazingly easy to backup. Zip the directory. Download. Done.
- They are amazing to setup via pipelines. If you want to write a CI/CD pipeline with your static website generators, they are pretty easy. You would probably not go over your quota for free runners either.
- Amazing editing experience. I use Obsidian to edit both my personal as well as Techrail’s website. You can use neovim. Or Zed. Or VSCode. You can use what you want and are comfortable with.
- Finding a free host is bloody easy. If you are not a pro at hosting, you can keep the generator on your system, generate the site and host it anywhere you want. Github pages, Gitlab pages, your own server. Anywhere!
- No Security problems. At all. Unless you have given away someone the access to your server (in case you hosted it on your own server), your website has 0 security flaws.
- Setting up your own server is dead simple. Apache? Nginx? Traeffic? Caddy? You choose any of those servers - they are all going to support a static website. No exceptions.
If you have less than 10K pages and are still in search for more reasons, you will probably never find one!