We have a lot of options online for creating and publishing blog posts. The most famous and commonly used option is WordPress! But launching a WordPress website comes with a lot of issues. So, let's discuss in this series about creating a blog that is plain HTML and is as configurable as WordPress.
For starters, there are two kinds of websites: (Psst... If you know this already, you can jump to "Why do we need a static HTML blog?")
- Dynamic Website: Dynamic website uses some programming language in the backend and stores your data in a database. A dynamic webpage generates the HTML on the fly and displays it to the visitor based on the page that the user is on. WordPress is an example of a dynamic website. It uses PHP as the programming language and MySQL as its database. Updating and creating new webpages seamlessly is easy in dynamic websites.
- Static Website: Static websites are pure HTML pages. They have no dependencies on any programming language or database in the background. However, we must create an HTML page for every web page/blog post we want on our website. It is generally manageable if the website has a lesser number of pages (between 10-30, depending on the patience level of the maintainer), but it becomes a lot harder to manage as the website size increases.
Why Do We Need a STATIC HTML Blog?
Dynamic websites are prone to hacking. WordPress comes with a lot of tools and plugins that help in making a good website. However, WordPress needs regular updates, and proper permissions set at the server level to ensure security. This comes with a learning curve. Or, you may have to depend on some service provider who can host the website for you. Now, your whole website depends on the skillset of the developer handling your website. A single misconfiguration in permissions will make your website a playground for hackers. But we just wanted a little space online to present ourselves and share our views, right? As a simple professional, we may be just looking for a space to showcase ourselves, share our views, publish our findings. These things should not come with the headache (and expense) of a whole agency managing my website, and then dealing with those hackers out there.
By the way, if you think that hacking issue is just a rumour, 30,000 websites are hacked every day, 43% of them are small websites.
The solution
KISS😘 PRINCIPLE: (Not that kiss by the way!!)
Keep it Stupidly Simple!
That's it. That's the solution. Do not over complicate things when it is not required to!
You want to showcase yourself? Create an HTML page for yourself (Or you can even hire a designer that may take a one time charge to make your HTML portfolio) and just publish it on a simple server. Ask some of your friends in IT or even give some extra bucks to your HTML Designer that may help you in getting those files on any simple Hosting Provider. There are even free of cost Hosting providers that can host your HTML website for free!
And let me tell you, the HTML websites are not that bad. In fact a normal user can't tell a difference between a dynamic or a static website at all. By the way, the blog you're reading right now, is a static page, not a dynamic CMS!
I'll post more about how you can set up your own full fledged static HTML website, that includes blog as well.