Are self-hosted blogs still a thing?

What started me on my data engineering journey was creating a website with my friend Chris for a company we started. The company was unsuccessful in strict (or even loose) financial terms, but it was successful in inspiring both of us to leave our sustainability careers behind and embark on new careers.

I remember how long we wrestled with the Wordpress site to get it to look like what we had in mind, how difficult it was to understand html, css, javascript and also how much fun it was. It opened my eyes to the idea that work didnt need to be a grind and that building things in the digital space was exactly the type of engineering I love.

Fast forward 10+ years and I'm back at it again, although armed with a wealth of engineering knowledge... but still with a distaste for HTML and CSS. Javascript I've learned to love and see it really as a poor man's Python (cue flame war - I'm just kidding, honest!). Now there are a wealth of static site generators our there that makes your life easy and can increase the speed of getting your thoughts out into the digital space. Of course, you can use a whole host of website publishing tools like Wordpress, Wix and Squarespace, and really if you aren't technically minded and want a managed solution this is the way to go. But if you do like rolling up your sleeve, creating and maintaining something then I'd point you towards static site generation.

Now the question you may ask is, do people still read websites in 2024? Sure there are many ways to get your content out there but my feeling is most of the socials and similar are really suited for smaller, fast format media and not the best fit for long form content. Medium is technically focussed, Substack is great for paid newsletters and LinkedIn is great for short content, clickbait titles and hot takes. So my (perhaps unpopular) opinion is that websites are still valid. The next installment is what are static site generators?