As a side-effect of my evangelism for working in the open I semi-regularly get asked for recommendations about which publishing platform someone should use and how they should get started.

Firstly before even choosing a platform I think you need your own domain. You really cannot rely on any web service to last these days so having a domain that you can point elsewhere and data you can export/import is a pretty fundamental strategy for anyone looking beyond the most casual of publishing.

Then there are comes the choice of where you are going to write/publish. Now there is a breed of blogger for who the endless quest for the perfect CMS/site setup is more important than the actual activity of posting anything. They move to the latest trending technology, tinker with settings and layouts in an endless search for perfection. This is entirely valid but it isn’t me. I am interested in as frictionless a writing experience as possible, with the minimal viable maintenance effort, somewhere that doesn’t make me shudder with their organisational culture.

This means I do not recommend Substack due to the whole Nazi Bar of it all. Medium is also out these days – after years of being a firm favourite due to the lovely editing UI and distraction free design – as it seems intent on making the reading experience a slog for an unfortunately high percentage of people in its endless search for a business model.

Due to my aforementioned preference for minimal viable effort I don’t recommend static-site options like Jekyll (which Steve uses) or even Kirby which I like in other circumstances. I do understand the appeal but they always seem like more effort than I am willing to extend to anything other than the actual writing…but if you are Team Tinker these will be for you.

Options I am neutral on [but only because I have not experimented much with them but know folks who have embraced them] include – Svbtle, micro.blog and Buttondown (a newsletter service rather than a blog platform).

The slight wildcard is – and I feel a bit icky for saying this – LinkedIn. You can post longer form content there and attract a big audience with a lot of love from their algo for native content on the platform. I find it a pretty clumsy UX and obviously you can’t ‘own’ anything but it can definitely be effective if reach and audience is important to you (it will attract a particular breed of LinkedIn folk though!)

So what do I actually recommend?

Given Matt Mullenweg’s (CEO of Automattic) embrace of the ‘dark side’ it is harder to recommend WordPress than in the past and the editing UI has become increasingly frustrating but, and it is a big ol’ but, the broader community is still large and lovely, there is endless support and guidance out there and multiple paths to getting your own site up and running (I use WordPress.com for this blog). So yeah – WordPress remains a solid option despite everything.

…but increasingly when asked my answer is Ghost. I like their story, their mission and their principles but most of all I love the writing interface. It feels like an earlier version of Medium – in a good way. Simple and sensible with a decent ecosystem of themes and features. It isn’t perfect – I’d like blog analytics rather than just newsletter focused data and mapping a domain was a little bit of a head scratcher but generally I think the learning curve to getting set up and getting something published is pretty painless and then it is a pleasure to maintain from there.

So if you are thinking of starting a personal blog or a newsletter give Ghost a go!

I realise this reads a little like an ad or sponsored content – but to be clear this blog is way too niche and small time for that kind of thing – this is just one geeks opinion.