I’m liking using WordPress for my portfolio much more than I thought I would. I previously used a simple sh script + Markdown (with lowdown). For a while I had this hosted on a Vultr VM, so it was a case of git push|pull then sh build.sh. Then I said goodbye to maintaining my own server and simply hosted the generated HTML on Codeberg. I thought I would miss this setup, but the Gutenberg block editor is amazing. I did not miss having to manually generate an index of blog posts, or an RSS feed.

Now I’m hosting for less than €2/month on Hetzner, which feels right for my needs. I only get a couple of visitors a day and mostly they’re bounces.

I’ve connected to WordPress.com Reader. I also installed the ActivityPub plugin. Email, RSS, Reader, ActivityPub 😅

I also have Jetpack.com connected, which gives me niceties like stats, CDN, downtime monitoring, brute force protection, access to advertising, an image carousel, and newsletter. I’m not sure how I feel about this. WordPress.com obviously want to steer people toward their paid options, hence bundling so much with Jetpack.

Hetzner already provides Deflate and Brotli. If I really want a CDN there’s CloudFlare. I already have UptimeRobot for monitoring for free. I assume Hetznet has its own firewall rules for bot attacks. I’m sure I can find an alternative to the Jetpack image carousel. And my foray into advertising posts was interesting but I’m sure only about getting attention. I guess this is the purpose of all advertising.

Analytics are another story. I could easily use PikaPods running Umami, which has the advantage of injecting the JavaScript from my own domain with a custom filename, avoiding adblocking. But are stats good for my mental hygiene? Currently I check my stats too often (every day). I enjoy not having stats on my microblog. Is it in the same category as Instagram? I’ll hide the Jetpack stats dashboard widget and see if that makes a difference.

The only other thing is a newsletter. I currently have a Substack but I don’t like it. It’s obvious double handling publishing on Substack and on my website. I could easily just migrate the (few) subscribers over to Jetpack. People could subscribe through WordPress.com Reader. And I would have a “subscribe” button right on my website. Or I could just go back to having a mailing list.txt and paste into Bcc. mailbox.org allows sending like 1,000 emails a day.

This Jetpack situation remains undecided.