I wrote a piece a little while ago about leaving it behind, but here I am, crawling back to WordPress with my tail embarrassingly hanging between my legs.
Recently, I decided to consolidate a number of services, including Carrd, into one website with a hosting package behind it to give me some space for my playful development projects.
In the process, I did a lot of experimenting. I tried Bearblog, which actually inspired my latest website concept because I loved the simple, minimal approach. Unfortunately, it was a little too minimal, and I didn’t feel comfortable moving away from my love for open source.
I played around with micro.blog next, but it felt extremely clunky and dated.
Finally, I found Hugo. It is a web framework for creating static sites with zero security concerns, and it gave me plenty of creative freedom to shape the site via markdown and .md files. But in 2026, who actually has the time? It was a fantastic framework to play with, but I wasn’t sure it would work for my blog in the long term.
All this around-the-houses experimentation has finally landed me on a much better website setup. I feel like I’ve downsized significantly and found a simple solution that will actually work for me. I doubt it would be the perfect fit for everyone, but it has exactly the type of simplicity I love!