Remember, most Twitter clones fail. With the platform based on blogs, the worst case if Micro.blog doesn’t work out is that you’ve still got your own blog! Instead of being left with nothing, you have all your microblog posts, domain name, and design. You can still cross-post to other social networks and move on to the next thing without starting over.
How do I take my design and host it elsewhere? Do I have to get my own hosting provider and install Hugo? What about plugins that Micro.blog has provided?
No plans to move but was curious after I read this paragraph.
You can download the content and the Hugo theme from settings. Then you could very easily deploy Hugo with that data using Vercel or Netlify.
Most plugins are also open source so you can easily add them (they either change something about the theme or add their own shortcodes).
I actually run a dedicated blog using Netlify and Hugo, the only thing it’s lacking is a micropub instance to use the apps, and setting it up is a pain – there are simply no good & reliable up-to-date tutorials or examples.
I agree. Migrating shouldn’t be too hard for a person used to tinkering with static site generators. There might be stuff breaking that need to be fixed, though, as Micro.blog provides extra parameters and features that won’t come with a vanilla Hugo installation.
Have you looked at Indiekit? From what I remember, it was relatively painless to set up.
Thank you for this link. I’ve seen a couple of mentions of IndieWeb and MicroPub but all of them led to forgotten Github repos customized for particular environments, engines, and websites.
This one seems like something I could potentially use if I wanted to (I’m not a developer).
Thanks, @sod and @yurymol. It still seems too technical for an average blogger. I’m not too concerned about the design as long as I have full control over my content.
You can download the content and the Hugo theme from settings. Then you could very easily deploy Hugo with that data using Vercel or Netlify.
Most plugins are also open source so you can easily add them (they either change something about the theme or add their own shortcodes).
If the Help contained instructions on how to do this, it would be great. It would also reflect great on Micro.blog which is actually showing people how to leave it while being confident that they won’t.
Here are the instructions: install Hugo as listed on the Hugo page (gohugo.io), go to the directory containing the export Manton provides with all your content (in the command line), type hugo to generate html.
Micro.blog also makes the finalized HTML available if you just want to keep hosting the same site.
I think the portability is already huge/as extensive as reasonably possible without literally cloning the whole of the MB service.