So what happened was...

I had a todo on my list for canceling my MagicPages subscription, so I went to do that. Seeing the Ghost version of this site running my custom theme gave me second thoughts. Remember how easy posting was with Ghost? Remember the comments, newsletters, and ActivityPub features? I caught myself before becoming too enamored with the idea, and canceled. If you use Ghost, MagicPages is a great service for hosting.

The draw of Ghost is the same as any "real" CMS... ease of posting. That reminded me that I was still running Pure Blog here at baty.blog. Hmmmm... :)

One thing about dynamically-generated CMSes is that one needs to keep them up to date, in case there have been any security or other issues. I logged into this blog, hit the update button, and I'm running the latest. While in here, I noticed there have been a ton of improvements since I last checked in. Kev has been doing a great job here.

"I'll only ever use an SSG for my blog!", I said, unconvincingly. Sometimes I don't want to. Sometimes Kev comes along and makes something like Pure Blog and I think, "Well, that's better!"

I can't have both. Or can I? It seems I have both right now. I dig Pure Blog, but if something has to give, it'll probably be that. I'm not ready to bail quite yet. It's too easy and simple and nice.

So, I'll continue blogging where and when my mood tells me to.

See!? Told you

Now that I sort of went back to hugo on the other blog, of course Kev introduces Pure Comments. Now what am I supposed to do? 😁

I love what Kev has done with Pure Blog. It's great, but I think I need to stick with a static site for now. I'm used to it, and I have a Whole Thing built around Emacs and Hugo. It's not like Pure Blog is difficult to host or anything, but my Hugo blog is simpler. All my Hugo content starts locally, which I prefer.

It's not Pure Blog, it's me.

I'm fickle, and could be back before you know it, so I'm leaving this up, for now.

See y'all back at baty.net.

The guy sure works hard at blogging. Using AI to help do that seems like a fine use case. He addresses the usual anti-AI backlash with a few choice quotes.

Doctorow, Six Years of Pluralistic

Purity culture is such an obvious trap, an artifact of the neoliberal ideology that insists that the solution to all our problems is to shop very carefully, thus reducing all politics to personal consumption choices

Ouch, but kinda.

Well, I did it. After days of tinkering with Pure Blog, I've used it for this site at baty.blog.

I didn't have the guts to replace my main blog at baty.net yet. Too much work.

Baty.blog has been powered by Blot for a while now, but I had to put this one somewhere, so Blot had to go. Most of the Blot content has been archived at blot.baty.net.

It feels nice to start fresh. Now, what should I use it for?

Originally posted on baty.net but thought it relevant here, too.

D'ya ever grow weary of thinking about blogging and blogging software and blogging workflows and blogging culture? No? Me neither. Not normally, anyway, but it's happening now.

I've been having a blast testing Kev Quirk's new blogging platform, Pure Blog. He's done a great job of nailing the basics. It's easy and fun to use. So fun, in fact, that I've been teetering on using it for this blog at baty.net.

Sometimes I just want a CMS.

Static blogs using Markdown files are great, but I like to post a lot of images, and SSGs make that more difficult. I've scripted a few things to help, but nothing beats a nice drag-and-drop UI.

It's been a relief using Pure Blog for a few days. Here's the thing, though, once I start considering going back to using a CMS, why not go all the way and use WordPress or Ghost (probably Ghost)? That's what I've been spiraling about for a few days. Am I going to be satisfied with something as simple as Pure Blog, when Ghost has analytics, comments, fediverse integration, etc.? I don't know, maybe?

If I do decide to change platforms, again, I need to deal with migrating thousands of posts. This is made more difficult by having changed platforms a dozen times, already. My Markdown files have all kinds of slightly different front matter; some YAML, some TOML. Some have "featured" images, some don't. It's a mess.

I was considering archiving the baty.net again and starting fresh. That feels like crazy talk, but I can't help thinking about it. Wouldn't it be nice not lugging all this legacy cruft around? Except, it would break a lot of links. It's not like my posts are linked to that often, but they are linked to. Seems rude.

Another option is to use one of my other domains. Baty.blog is a good candidate. That's currently running on Blot but I'd archived that blog before. There's always copingmechanism.com.

Thing is, if I don't continue using baty.net for my primary blog, I'll lose a ton of readers. Baty.net is my blog, and not many folks are likely to update their RSS feeds just to follow me around. Part of me doesn't mind, but I don't love the idea.

You see how it is? I have a love/hate relationship with blogging workflows. My mood changes too often and it ruins each carefully crafted setup. It's a good thing there's a love portion of the equation.

Sooo, anyhoo, that's where my head is, this morning. I'm going to be out for a while today, and when I return I would like to make the call. Stay tuned.

At the beginning of the year, I jokingly resolved that I wouldn't change my blog platform more than once every three months. Technically, I've kept my word. But last week Kev Quirk introduced his new blogging platform, Pure Blog. I am constitutionally unable to resist trying new blogging platforms, so I set up a copy and started tinkering.

It's nice! It's not technically an SSG (it uses PHP), but it maintains content as YAML-fronted Markdown files, just like most SSGs. What attracted me most, originally, was that the whole thing felt like something I'd build, given the time and talent. It focused on the things I find important, so it was a good fit right off the bat.

Here's mine, so far, running at pure.baty.net. I'm playing with fonts and colors a bit. Currently, it mimics my Emacs theme, ef-day.

Without too much fuss, Pure Blog behaves the way I want a blog to behave. It's simple, yet complete for what I need. I do have a wishlist, though.

• Footnote support
• Header improvements (such as making the blog title clickable or otherwise customizable)
• I'd like to override the Copyright text.
• A built-in /archive page with compact list of all posts, different from that of the home page. (I've made my own basic version)
• Possibly an easier upgrade mechanism. I'm using a custom justfile but it's fragile. Kev's instruction for upgrades are close, but miss things like /content/layouts/, which are technically code, not content. And custom CSS is edited using the admin panel, which makes that also content, not code. It's not onerous now, but I have to pay more attention than I'd like.

In fairness, the whole project was meant to scratch a particular itch for one person. I'm not complaining! Like I told Kev, "Can open, worms everywhere!" :)

But now what? Part of me wants to break my rule and move baty.net to Pure Blog. That would be an enormous project, because years of using different tools has brought a variety of front matter formats (TOML, YAML, dates, tags, etc).

Another option is to make a new blog, such as I have so far with pure.baty.net, but even though the domain is fitting and kind of funny, I think the novelty will wear off.

I'm thinking about replacing baty.blog with a fresh new Pure Blog and leaving the old site behind. I have the content saved, so while it'll break links, at least the content is still out there somewhere.

Anyway, Kev's made a nifty, simple, useful, and easy-to-host blogging tool with Pure Blog. I need to figure out what to do with it.

Just to be clear, I don't have serious plans to migrate my main Baty.net (Hugo) blog to Pure Blog. That doesn't mean I won't explore the "But what if I converted baty.net to Pure Blog?" scenario.

Things will be wonky while I tinker. Probably don't link to anything here, since I'm almost certain the links will break.

Some things I've noticed:

• Date formats in YAML are inconsistent with different SSGs. For example, Hugo wants date: 2026-02-05 05:29:52 -0500 and Pure Blog uses date: 2026-02-07 16:25 which throws an error in Hugo. Adding seconds to the date fixes it.
• Quoted strings in YAML front matter are optional. Many of my Hugo posts do quote the title: attribute using either single or double quotes. Would need to be removed, because in Pure Blog, those quotes are included as part of the title, etc. Same goes for tags: ["Tag1","Tag2"] vs [Tag1,Tag2].