High on my reasons why I wish I had the knowledge (or the time and energy to gain the knowledge) to code my own software: As far as I can tell, nobody has yet written the CMS I want to use for blogging.
Basically, what I want is early-2000s MovableType, only with some modern updates. I’ve long missed many of the tweaks and customizations that I could manage with MovableType that I can’t do on WordPress.
Pie-in-the-sky featureset:
- Self-hostable or installable on a hosted server (Dreamhost, etc.)
- Micropub compatible so I can use MarsEdit or other such third-party editors
- ActivityPub/IndieWeb compatible for federation (at least outbound, ideally bidirectional so that federated replies could be appended as “comments”)
- Generates a static website instead of building every page when its called
- Only regenerates necessary pages when updates are published, full-site rebuilds available on demand
- Some sort of templating “building blocks” system for assembling different pages, posts, or sections thereof
- Basic templates that are fully standards-compliant and accessible (HTML5, ARIA when/if necessary (since static pages shouldn’t have much dynamic content), etc.)
- Templates should also be microblogging compatible
- Example: Titles are optional, and shouldn’t be the only item used for permalinks to any given post, something that bugs me about my current blog template but I haven’t figured out how to fix yet
- Markdown for writing and storing posts
- The ability to generate multiple versions of posts/pages on rebuild
- Example: Output both
.htmland.mdversions of a blog post, so a “view source” link could be included in the post template; readers could then easily click through to view the Markdown version
- Example: Output both
- Import posts exported from existing common blogging or microblogging systems (WordPress and Twitter, in my particular case)
Things I don’t want or care about:
- Fancy drag-and drop “block” editors like WordPress’s Gutenberg
- Comments (beyond pingbacks/trackbacks/federated responses)
- Having to do everything on one machine (edit locally and upload)
I’m sure there are plenty of other things that I could put in the wishlist or the “no thanks” list, but those are the first ones to come to mind. Every time I’ve done a survey of static site generators, they consistently fail one or more of the above.
Honestly, I think I could live without much of the above, if I could find a static site generator that would allow me to blog and manage posts and pages from anywhere (my desktop, my laptop, my iPhone, my iPad, etc.) through the Micropub API; logging into a web interface of some sort should be possible if necessary but not required for general day-to-day post publishing.
Oh, and it needs to be installed and managed by someone who has a higher-than-average knowledge of computing and tech geekery, but doesn’t do this stuff for a living. Someone who gets annoyed when they call tech support and have to start with the “is it plugged in?” level of questioning, but who also gets annoyed when software assumes that you’ve been immersed in this kind of stuff for decades. There doesn’t seem to be much out there other than WordPress that does a good job of bridging between “it just works” and “I eat, drink, and breathe code in all my waking and sleeping hours” levels of capability. I don’t mind, and even enjoy, poking at the guts of things when I have the time and energy, but I don’t want to be required to do a week of research to figure out what the terms in the “how to install” documentation mean.
So — I don’t suppose that anyone knows of my magical unicorn blogging software actually existing anywhere?