💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › posts › 1589 captured on 2023-12-28 at 15:18:41. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Years ago I used to blog. I used Wordpress since v1.x. Eventually I got lost working with a complex theme (Divi) and it wasn't fun anymore. On top of that we got cancel culture and I moved to a country where saying the wrong thing can get you years in prison. I've hardly posted in a decade.
Lately I've enjoyed the relative quiet of Geminispace and Gopherspace. It reminds me of the kinds of sites I used to visit in my high-school computer lab in the 1990s, like the Ultima Dragons Internet Chapter, of writing and reading things in text-mode apps for DOS, and visiting BBSes. It reminds me of that time, too, and the people and places I knew.
Gemini could be a fun way to make a new site, but I haven't quite figured out how to host and build it. Just hand code? Or are there tools, like a CMS or a static site generator, that can make a site that you can read on the web, Gopher, and Gemini, like this one?
For now I'm starting here, drinking a kishu highball with you.
There are a tonne of tools, actually. The one I've been keeping in my back pocket is a "theme" (if you can say that) for hugo-based static sites. Something I've noticed (though I haven't updated it in a while) is that it doesn't generate an Atom feed so link aggregators won't accept your submissions.
Generally speaking though, a gemini server is super easy to use (if you don't need reverse proxying!) because there are just a tonne of servers available and the only formatting available is whatever gemtext gets ya. In other words: its way simpler to host a good looking capsule than it is to host a good looking http site.
Definitely be careful if you've got censorship laws in place that can affect you though.
As far as starting here, yeah, this place is pretty chill.
I honestly love how relaxed this community is