Building a blog

written by Graham Knapp on 2019-03-18

I have had a few ideas for content to share recently and wanted a good way to do so. I wanted to find a good solution for blog publishing with a few criteria:

Built using Python, editable in markdown so I can develop my skills.
Simple to build and maintain - I am not a web developer and have no desire to become one. That said, I have been building websites on an amateur basis since the 1990s so I'm not afraid of writing a little html if I have to.
Capable of incorporating Jupyter Notebooks
Simple to deploy, preferably for free. I am hoping to do this via my internet provider but might go via GitHub failing that or even pay for a small cloud server.
No initial need for interractive content.

I saw that the static site generators Pelican and Lektor were available. That sounds like a good solution as it should be quick and have few moving parts which could break. Lektor looked simple, welcoming and modern enough so I downloaded and installed it. I listened to Talk Python episode 160 as I did so and that encouraged me that I was on a good path.

Listen to Talk Python Episode 160 - Lektor (2018)

My initial experience has been great - I got going with no problem except that at the time of writing I have been waiting over a week for free to get around to setting up my personal web space so I can deploy the site. At least that has given me enough time to configure a basic blog and write my first 2 posts.

Post-deployment update

OK so I have gone for GitHub pages for hosting with a custom web domain - buying the domain name and specifying it in Lektor and in GitHub pages was enough to get it working properly with https - no need to update certificates every few months !