My blogging setup
I've been looking for a way to very easily write and publish posts. I've tried static page generators like Hugo and and Jekyll on GitHub Pages in the past, but there are just enough steps to create too much friction.
First you have to write your markdown files in a text editor. Then you have to compile it and publish it using a computer. I was looking for a quick way to write posts, even on my phone or iPad (with a Bluetooth keyboard). SimpleNote came close to what I needed, except that each post exists completely separate to other posts.
Enter Ghost. I spun up a Digital Ocean instance and followed the tutorial for setting up the one-click application. Easy peasy.
Now I am self-hosting my own content and I can type away on any device that can load Ghost's web-based Markdown editor. Adding header images is super easy thanks to built-in Unsplash integration, and then publishing a post is one click away.
In future I hope that decentralized solutions like Beaker browser and the Dat project will make it much easier to publish blogs in a decentralized fashion, but until then running my own Ghost instance seems to make the most sense.