After spending blood, sweat, and tears (about an hour reading through a Hugo tutorial) I have created a new and improved version of my website using the Notrack theme.
This time I’m including a blog, which I plan to regularly post to. I was inspired to make this site after discovering the Wiby search engine – a search engine focused on lightweight, non-commercial websites. Through Wiby I found all sorts of interesting blogs and sites reminiscent of the early web, where “web surfing” was actually enjoyable and the Internet was not yet weighed down by all the corporate java-slop.
Plus, I don’t use social media for various reasons that I’ll probably end up writing about – but I would like to occasionally scream into the void like everyone else. A personal blog is a great way to own your own platform and express yourself with writing and photos without all the ramifications of social media.
If you have any interest in personal blogs or webhosting you’ve probably heard of Hugo. I chose to use Hugo to create my website because it is incredibly fast and easy. There are tutorials abound and the documentation on their site is very useful. Part of what makes it so fast and easy is the inclusion of themes. You can scroll through the gallery, pick one you like, and get it spun up with a handful of commands. From there, you can make any changes to the site you want, and depending on how your chosen theme is configured, you can have great control over how it looks and functions with minimal knowledge of HTML and CSS.
The theme I chose to use is the Notrack theme I linked above. I like the simplistic style of it, and as an advocate for privacy in an age of mass surveillance, I can appreciate the no-tracking philosophy. 😎 The Notrack theme (and Hugo overall) makes it a total breeze to post to and organize a blog.
For the actual hosting side of things, the tutorials on Landchad.net are very easy and quick to follow. There are guides there for quite a few different services you can host on the same server you host your site on along with all the basic system administration information you need to maintain your site/server.