Running a self-built blogging system for 24 years: data and simplicity win
genmon · x · 2026-10-23
The author of Interconnected shares the colophon of his blog, which he has self-hosted since 2000 — 24 years of running his own system.
- Architecture: each post is a Markdown text file in a date-named directory; a build step creates a read-only SQLite index for archives, tags and backlinks; pages are rendered per-request with Flask/Jinja — the "Baked Data" pattern — surviving Hacker News traffic spikes without CDN or cache.
- Writing workflow: no authoring UI; he uses Ulysses across three stages (idea capture, outline, writing/edit) and BBEdit to finish.
- Longevity philosophy: what matters is the data and simplicity — the engine should be simple enough to rewrite in half a day, which has happened several times. Bonus anecdote: in 2004 he pulled a failing drive from the rack and cooled it with ice cubes to buy 20 minutes to copy data off.
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