Minimal blog platform with image hosting?

February 5, 2023 4:20 PM

I need a place to do some writing. I’m not looking to do much with it aside from occasionally share it with others. I’d like to be able to include images as well. I don’t want it to be tied to any social platform, so things like Tumblr are out. Think a really nice notebook, but online. Willing to pay for the right platform!
posted by summerteeth to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

A hosted Wordpress is the first thing to come to mind.

If that’s too tied to a social platform, maybe just GitHub pages? I use Hugo with GitHub actions to automatically publish (link in profile); turns Markdown into really nicely formatted static pages. Knowledge of git is useful there.
posted by supercres at 4:45 PM on February 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: There is Mataroa which is *very* minimalist in its approach. It does have image and domain support though and is pretty cheap.

BearBlog is similar in it's approach but I'm unsure about the image support on that one.

Then there's Blot (which I have used quite a bit), which is a service that is again fairly cheap, with domain and image support. The service basically turns a Dropbox, Google Drive or a Git folder into a blog. It's great. The guy who runs it is also super helpful and friendly when it comes to support and questions.

There is also Write.as. I've used the site in the past and it's simple to use and ticks all your boxes. However, I found it a bit more expensive than the other options and don't blog enough (I should though) to justify the expense.
posted by d_hill at 10:31 PM on February 5, 2023

Forgot to mention Listed, which is linked to a Standard Notes account. Both are excellent services. I use Standard Notes but I was already paying for, and using, Blot so never really explored Listed.
posted by d_hill at 10:33 PM on February 5, 2023

Blogger is free, and so is Google photos.
posted by Ferrari328 at 7:28 AM on February 6, 2023

How about a simple Squarespace blog? They have lots of blog templates, some more minimal than others, and are very customizeable. Cost is about $160 annual for website platform software and hosting. $20 more for domain. Images and videos hosted easily. Generally easy to learn and use. I am a Squarespace designer so really like this platform overall, but there may be others that bloggers would recommend.
posted by j810c at 8:00 AM on February 6, 2023

The above are all great options for minimalist blogging.

I wanted to add a few more options to the list:
- Ghost (you can pay to have them host it, or explore other Ghost blog hosting options)
- Blogstatic
- Bloggi

Good luck in your search! :)
posted by misspettigrew at 2:56 PM on February 6, 2023

OMG.LOL has recently added weblog to their services. It's simple and clean. 20USD/year.
posted by cihan at 4:18 PM on February 6, 2023

Response by poster: Fantastic answers all. There are so many great services out there that I would've never known about. I'm really liking the idea of blot which d_hill suggested, particularly because it means I can write markdown offline and they'll just magically land there.

Thank you!
posted by summerteeth at 6:53 PM on February 7, 2023