If you’re reading this site (and someone is…) you know that I run LifeBits.blog on the Substack hosted blogging platform. That platform has some really nice features; it has a newsletter capability built in, so every post can be sent to those who subscribe to the blog.
Bludit, which is what I began using for this self-hosted website, isn’t as good. It’s not meant to be a huge publishing system like Substack and it doesn’t have quite the number of users as something like WordPress, but it serves well as a content management system (CMS) that can run on pretty much any computer.
Part of the “issue” is that this is an open-source and free blogging platform, and things like plugins (extensions to add functionality to the Bludit system) and themes (the visual look of a website) are created by users. That means that they’re usually unsupported and don’t work well.
Some of the plugins that I’ve tried to use suggest using the “settings” gear icon to configure them, but the gear icon does not work for this purpose in any of them, so obviously that function has been usurped by Bludit. Nobody updates their plugins or themes; although some show that an update is available, it’s impossible to update.
So last night as I was eating pizza at Big Bill’s NY PIzza in Centennial, CO (a place my wife and I have frequented weekly for almost 25 years), I did a comprehensive search on other content management systems that are free, have a decent number of themes and plugins, and don’t require a database back-end. I even tried out several of those CMS offerings, and they all had issues.
I really didn't want to go through the WordPress hassle again. I have done too much with WordPress, and that's one CMS that always seems to over-promise and under-deliver. One of my last-ditch Google searches was "What's a good traditional CMS that can run on a Raspberry Pi 500?," and one of the top hits was Joomla.
I had tried Joomla years ago, and wasn't impressed. I have to say that my opinion has changed a lot. It took me literally less than 30 minutes to configure Joomla on the Raspberry Pi, which is frankly incredible. And it seems to be (I'm just scratching the surface of version 6) actually more powerful and faster than WordPress.
This site will probably go through several more iterations before I get it looking just the way I want it, so please be patient! I'm hoping that I can actually get this to send out emailed newsletters like Substack... I just need to figure it out. 😀