Of all the available blog alternatives, I chose Github pages with Jekyll. Actually I’ve been thinking about this for some time, so this decision is well founded.

The majority of alternatives are like Wordpress or Medium; a hosted service where you only need to register, making getting started a breeze. My main concern with them is the content I’m creating is not really mine. Granted, I can move away any time, but bringing the posts with me is not that easy. Most of these sites use some kind of rich formatting; it makes copy-pasting prone to errors.

Also, there are so many options, I can’t really pick one over the others. Maybe Medium seems like the most trending with it’s simple interface and vibrant community, but I might live to rue this decision later.

On the other hand, I already have a blog using Jekyll and I really like it’s simplicity. It’s a bunch of Ruby code that takes the posts and the config files and in turn produces static files; perfect for static content. Also I got used to writing posts in markdown instead of rich text. Hosting on Github Pages for free and without hassle is just a bonus point.

I feel I have complete control. If I ever decide to move away from Github, then I can set proper redirects to my new site. I can bring my content with me, wherever I want.

These counterweight the ~5 minutes needed to set up this site. And getting started is the important thing; perfection will come later.