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First thing I fixed was my navigation on smaller viewports.

I made it multiline and wraps nicely. A small but much awaited update.

I also added an aria-current highlight on the navigation to improve the usability.

Next, once I had my layout fixed with rewritten HTML and CSS, I was able to add a sibar to my blog pages on wider viewports.

It currently shows 5 latest blog posts and a list of categories.

I also built a simplistic blog roll feature but I'm still curating the list so I haven't turned it on in production yet.

Speaking of categories, I finally started using them and built sub pages for each category so people can find posts of same type easier.

I moved from Ghost to Notion and can now manage my blog posts in a single database with easy-to-add new features (as columns) and a superb editor experience.

I tinkered with Contentful and Strapi as alternatives but now I'm super glad I decided to go with Notion.

@christian It is! It kinda caught me by surprise as I had not even thought about it as a potential CMS until I tried it out and was surprised by how flexible and functional it was.

And it didn't even require any hacks: Notion functions just like any other CMS for this functionality.

@hamatti I noticed you mentioned using Netlify - assuming you're still with them (Sorry if it's written and I missed it)

With that previous headless Ghost setup, or indeed now your Notion one - was there any extra costs involved?

I'm imagining (at least for Ghost) you needed a separate server for which to host that on? which would then be linked to GitHub or similar to rebuild the site when any changes came through?

Super nice that Notion could work out the box like that for you

@christian Yes, still hosting in Netlify!

With Ghost, I used to have self-hosted instance on a VPS that cost maybe 5EUR/mo or so.

WIth Notion, I pay $8/mo but since I already pay it for my other note taking, I'm effectively saving the 5 euros from Ghost server.

For both of them, my setup is that I have custom npm scripts that when run, will download a post, render it to HTML and save in my repository.

When that repository is updated in GitHub, Netlify will automatically build and deploy.

@christian With Ghost, there's also a hosted option (I have one of those for my Syntax Error newsletter) that costs a monthly fee and would work exactly the same as my self-hosted one.

@christian For clients, I'd either choose Ghost if its a simple publication (ie. a blog or newsletter or something like that) or maybe Contentful if it's something that requires more customization and configuration.

Notion is good for a indie web side project but it's too easy to change things that shouldn't be changed in the Notion GUI and then everything breaks.

For one person who does content, integrations and web dev, it's a nice one.

@hamatti

Ah yeah for sure, Notion would be a tricky sell as more things could break. For solo projects it's interesting though

Nice, will look into Contentful more, I've tended to avoid CMS platforms like this so far as, while they offer a free tier, they are subscription based, and I'd worry further down the line they might adjust the quota and suddenly my clients will have to pay.

Kirby CMS is also an option I think, which is pay once, though that too would require a server.

@christian I tinkered with Strapi as a self-hosted open source alternative to Contentful. They operate on a similar content model philosophy and setting up Strapi was relatively straight forward for me.

@hamatti

, okay that looks neat - heh, I'm coming out of this with a whole bunch of stuff to try Thanks Juhis :)

@christian As someone who's used and set up quite a few Contentful spaces, I felt quite at home with Strapi.