Josh's Blog - Introducing Gistblog 🎉
tl;dr checkout Gistblog here
I don't quite know what triggered it but one night in early November 2021 I decided that I wanted to start blogging every once in awhile again. It doesn't matter that few, if any, people will ever read the things I write. It's just a creative outlet. But regardless, as always I was paralyzed by all the choices I had for which blog platform/engine to use.
I decided to just put my first post in a GitHub Gist to get the ball rolling, thinking I would move it elsewhere later. But then I thought it might be kind of cool to continue using Gists for blogging since it was so easy. I started looking more into the APIs and discovered that a workflow around blogging via Gists was definitely feasible (shoutout PyGithub).
It also just so happened that the 2021 GitHub Actions Hackathon was going on, so as any good developer does... I decided to make my own Rube Goldberg machine blog engine instead of trying to pick one! A few weeks later I am happy to introduce... Gistblog!
Funny story, the hackathon is hosted by DEV which is actually a very lovely blog/social platform 😅 But it's all good, I'm entering the Whacky Wildcards category 🤣
Gistblog is an opinionated GitHub repo setup that turns markdown into blog posts. Powered by the Gistblog GitHub Action, your markdown is turned into wonderful GitHub Gists that can be easily updated and shared. Here's my Gistblog embedded into my GitHub profile README. The fancy markdown table of blog posts is even generated by Gistblog!
Do you need a simple platform for sharing your thoughts and ideas with the internet? Have you ever wanted an easy way to turn some plaintext into a blog post? Don't care about things like SEO, monetization, or having a fancy looking website? Is "indefinitely free" your desired monthly cost of hosting your own blog where all the content is yours? Already a big GitHub fan? Gistblog is the blogging engine for you!
Follow the setup guide and Happy Gistblogging! 🎉