Move my blog to Bearblog
I had an itch to refresh my blog, but the cumbersome process of updating with NotionNext and my struggle to harness its built-in RSS capabilities, not to mention my dissatisfaction with its flashy design, led me to spend a weekend migrating to BearBlog from NotionNext.
As someone who prefers simplicity and lacks programming prowess, I had a go at crafting my own blog, but the maintenance proved to be too cumbersome and the results fell short of my expectations, prompting me to seek out blogging platforms.
My introduction to BearBlog came via Mastodon, where I noticed it being used by some to create sleek personal blogs. Its clean interface and impressive speed captivated me instantly. BearBlog is a minimalist's dream—fast, clean, Markdown-friendly, and free of JavaScript. With each page weighing in at just 2-5kb and no client-side rendering, the speed is unbeatable.
Curious about the mastermind behind BearBlog, I discovered Herman Martinus, a Cape Town-based programmer, cyclist, and mountaineer. BearBlog is already profitable, and Herman's vision is to create a sustainable product for the long haul, as he expressed in his blog post:
I am intrinsically linked to Bear, a reflection of my professional and technical identity. It's not a commodity to be easily traded. Both my personal blog and my company's site, where I earn my keep, run on Bear, fueling my drive to enhance and sustain the platform for the benefit of all. I envision Bear growing, but at a pace that's measured, not one that mirrors the breakneck speed of Silicon Valley startups.
BearBlog also excels in SEO, automatically populating all essential meta and social tags, along with opengraph data. It includes a robots.txt and a sitemap.xml that are refreshed with every site update. When publishing on BearBlog, the only manual inputs required are the title and content—the meta description is cleverly set to the first 160 characters of your text.
With a strong emphasis on privacy, BearBlog steers clear of Google Analytics, favoring Fathom instead. For someone like me with no need for in-depth analytics, BearBlog's built-in insights are more than sufficient to track the blog's performance.
Features including RSS, email subscriptions, and custom domains are on offer, though the latter two come at a cost. The core functionalities are free and more than adequate, and while the paid extras are tempting, they're not necessary for my needs, so I've opted to stick with the basics.
Before the migration, my mind brimmed with content and ideas eager to be shared. Yet, post-migration, it seems that creative well has run dry. I've chosen a platform that prioritizes speed, usability, and privacy, embracing a simpler, more focused blogging journey. I hope this shift will encourage me to document more of my life and thoughts, and perhaps one day, when I revisit these words, I'll find a touch of naivety in my current self.