> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # All Personal Blogs Die, But Mine Came Back As a Ghost - URL: https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/all-personal-blogs-die-but-mine-came-back-as-a-ghost/ - Published: 2025-06-11T01:40:54.000Z - Updated: 2025-07-15T15:20:33.000Z - Description: Discussing moving my blog to Ghost after using Jekyll for over a decade because ActivityPub is really exciting. - Author: Matthew Brunelle - Tags: Self-hosting ### Blog Archeology For a decade (!) from 2011 to 2021 I hosted my personal blog on Github Pages with Jekyll. I had forgotten much of the history behind my blog but thankfully it was just a git [repo](https://github.com/ciferkey/ciferkey.github.com?ref=blog.matthewbrunelle.com)! We can look back in time through the changelog. The first post was 2011-03-15 and titled "Cold Boot": > I'd like to give a special thanks to [James Hunt](https://web.archive.org/web/20140901204212/http://ohthatjames.github.io/) who's blog I forked (its amazing how you can actually fork a blog). As well as the [inspiration](https://web.archive.org/web/20130220102955/http://chrismdp.com/2009/12/jekyll) to do so. > I used to have a blog at blog.overflowbit.com however it ended up becoming malnourished and so I decided to shut it down. One day I would like to set up a portfolio site at matthewbrunelle.com, however that would require having material to put in my portfolio. As of now I'm a high school senior for Rhode Island. I'm applying for the [Google Summer of Code 2001](http://www.google-melange.com/?ref=blog.matthewbrunelle.com), specifically with the [Python Software Foundation](http://www.python.org/psf/?ref=blog.matthewbrunelle.com). As such I needed a blog to post to and rather than set up a self hosted word-press install again I opted to try out [Jekyll](https://github.com/ciferkey/ciferkey.github.com?ref=blog.matthewbrunelle.com). > I can't wait to dig in to some real development! > \~Matt (Links have been updated to wayback machine archive links since all personal blogs die.) How ironic that what I thought was the start of my blog was the announcement of the death of my old blog. `blog.overflowbit.com` is sadly not in the wayback machine, so it is truly lost to time. I think I used WordPress at the time hosted on some forgotten VPS but we will never know. In fact I let the registration slip for a while but it seems no one sniped it before I rebought the domain recently. ### The Value of Static Sites The fact that I can figure any of this out though is a testament to the power of the git repo + markdown + static site generation style of blogs. Markdown is a tried and tested format for content. When I wanted to stand up my blog again I was able to just copy the markdown out of the repo and load it into Ghost. There were some custom tags I had added and needed to be updated but all the text formatting was portable. Speaking for portability back when I started blogging I loved that all I really needed to do was generate an RSS feed and I could serve it as a static file. Honestly I still love that aspect of RSS and RSS in general. RSS is unencumbered content distribution at its finiest. I consume RSS feeds daily and I like the idea of giving back content over RSS. Somewhat related, Kagi is [throwing their support](https://blog.kagi.com/small-web?ref=blog.matthewbrunelle.com) behind Small Web. It turns out it was very easy to [add my site to their repo](https://github.com/kagisearch/smallweb/pull/421?ref=blog.matthewbrunelle.com) for inclusion. ### So why Ghost? So flash forward to now. It turns out my blog had been rotting for years and at some point that Github Pages had just stopped serving the site. I realized this last month at PyCon and I got the itch to start writing again. Cory Doctorow gave the keynote speech and I was reminded about how the web can be free and open. I should probably take the time to read through *The Internet Con:How to Seize the Means of Computation* At the same time my goals with writing are a little different now. Now I am looking for the following: - Attention sinks pull me in so many different directions. While I love to tinker setting up software, I currently want to focus more on writing. - I still want to write my posts in Markdown - ActivityPub integration. I'm not active on any social media so this sounds weird but I like the idea of contributing long-form content to the fediverse. I guess its called Macroblogging retroactively now that microblogging exists. Plus I've played around with implementing the protocol before and its really nifty. ActivityPub support rules out static site generation. I had seen some approaches to shoehorn in support but they didn't feel great. The extra steps required to publish each post also goes against the low friction writing goal. I had looked into using [Writefreely](https://writefreely.org/?ref=blog.matthewbrunelle.com) instead but I kept hitting snags with self-hosting it. Then I found Ghost: - Open source and easily self-hostable. Its already bundled in the Unraid Community Apps. I just had to put it behind Caddy and set up the DNS on Cloudflare. - ActivityPub integration is currently in beta for paid hosted users. Ghost recently [posted](https://activitypub.ghost.org/ramping-up-for-expansion/?ref=selfh.st) about the 6.0 release is on its way soon and will include ActivityPub. In its current private form it sounds like it was deployed as a side car with its own nginx so I'm curious if thats what will ship in the next release. - Newsletters? I don't think I will use this feature to be honest. It could be fun to do a private one for my family members though. ### What I Will Miss My old blog started by forking someone else's blog. Thats so neat! I tried to pay that forward and keep my own blog available as a repository. I will miss that now that I'm using Ghost. But you know, at the end of the day my posts are still just Markdown text. I can yank them out and rebuild if I need to again. As I said, all blogs die, so in a decade I suppose I'll do some more blog necromancy.