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<h1>Bloggings</h1>
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<h2>A Minimalist blog</h2>
<h3>23-11-2023</h3>
<h6>Updated 07-09-2025</h6>
<p>
In the past I've used several blog engines, CMS, and rolled my own solutions, but at
the end of the day, I find writing simple html is faster and easier than using a blog
engine. A blog engine or CMS makes you dependant on other softwareand may no longer exist
or be obsolete in a couple of years. Plus you usually have to hack the html and css
of these engines to get what you want anyway, which defeats their purpose.
</p>
<p>
After playing with 8 bit computers, my IT career debuted writing invoicing
applications using Multiplan on MS-DOS, so plain text has a nostalgic pull
for me. Searching for a reasonable solution, I looked at
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)">Gopher</a> and
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)">Gemini</a>.
</p>
<p>
Both are nice although Gopher is old and quirky and Gemini still a bit experimental,
but the fundemental problem is that they both require specific browsers, html bridges or plugins to be viewed,
limiting their use and content availability to a few initiates, and I <i>really</i> mean a few.
Lets face it, the www is the common denominator today.
</p>
<p>
Ok, you can't put the djinn back in the bottle. You can do a load of stupid stuff
with a web site, and there are billions of them out there producing carbon, wasting energy,
and displaying a marked lack of content behind a show of technological sleight of hand.
</p>
<p>
Instead, the onus is on <b>you</b> to write a universally readable web site,
not on <b>the reader</b> to posess the right browser.
</p>
<p>
Of course, you can't force people to be responsible, and major search engines
don't offer to filter out crap websites. In the mean time, I'll practice what I preach.
</p>
<p>
So here's a blog with articles that just uses simple html.
There are no Javascript, grids, or
fancy formats. Articles are plain html and can be read in a terminal text browser like
<a href="https://lynx.browser.org/">Lynx</a>, or a simple browser
graphical browser like <a href="https://dillo.org/">Dillo</a>, or a state
of the art browser like
<a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Firefox</a>.
</p>
<p>
The only extras are the use of some basic css for browsers that can use
it, and UTF-8 character encoding rather than ASCII. Behind the scenes
there's some PHP for generating article listings and search, and a couple of
bash scripts to edit new articles and upload them. I think
this arrangement will be pretty future resistant.</p>
<p><a href="https://git.wittamore.fr/blog/about/">You can download the scripts here</a>
</p>
<p>
A Google only web is on the horizon. Let them have it. Instead let's go
back to enjoying a fast, pertinent, content-rich space where you are not
the product.
</p>
<p>
For info, I use <a href="https://librewolf.net">Librewolf</a>,
a more secure version of Firefox, and
<a href="https://sr.ht/~bptato/chawan/">Chawan</a>,
perhaps the best terminal web browser to date.
</p>
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