I really think I am starting to understand, at least the basics of GitHub. I am by no means a pro, but hosting my blog here (and spending a sizeable chunk of Sunday moving old content into it) has helped at least a bit.

Using a github repo and cloudflare for the DNS on my domain will likely keep it minimal and online.. now getting content up regularly to keep visitors coming back will be the challenge. The main reason for moving to Github from Ghost is simple - cost. I can host my site - no frills - for free. Ghost costs much more than that on an annual basis. Sure the platform is nice, but I don’t need a fancy web based editor for my blog that handles Markdown. VScode and Github do just the same.

I will not have the flashiness of themes, but typically I pick something boring anyway. THe content is important, the shades of whatever color blue might be online - are not.

In addition - the savings I will see when discontinuing Ghost will allow me, if I choose, to purchase a subscription to GitHub pro - which will allow more things in other repos (and maybe the one for the blog).

Cloudflare too?

I had been using Azure DNS for my website for a good few years, and the management was easy (read - no work at all) but I was curious how cloudflare works. Since they have a free tier for personal websites and playing around, I thought I would bounce over there and give it a go. Besides, Azure DNS updates so fast, if I feel the need to switch back - to play with other features (DDOS and CDN maybe?) I can always do that.

There is some cost to using Azure DNS - super minimal cost, but still a cost just the same. I am far more cost conscious as of late - trying to keep expenses down where I do not need them and if they can go away for a while, that is even better.

This is not a knock on ghost or Azure - they are both great services - hell without Azure I wouldnt have much to do at work (ok maybe I would still be busy with GCP). I am just trying to keep my website as cost minimal as possible. If @troyhunt can run haveIbeenpwned.com on Azure and Cloudflare for .02 something cents per day, I think my tiny little corner of the world should be even easier to run.

There is a good chance I will find some other way to smash words into the Internet down the road and do way more work that necessary to push this little site to that space. It seems to be what I do, the work to shuffle all my things around and update for a month or two and then go radio silent until the next move lands. Hopefully a super low cost solution is the best one yet… don’t pay loads of money for something you can do for much less money. #LessonHopefullyLearned