Bear: an interesting, worth-knowing, and fast blogging platform

Yesterday I stumbled a new, very interesting new blogging platform called Bear:

A privacy-first, no-nonsense, super-fast blogging platform. No trackers, no javascript, no stylesheets. Just your words.

I spent some time using it, to see how it works and how it behaves, and I have to say, I found Bear pretty good, and very promising. A full web page generated by this CMS weighs less than 10kb, everything is incredibly fast, and the styling options are straight forward. As a challenge — I tried to replicate the Jolly Teapot’s design: took me just a few minutes of CSS to get a nearly identical result.

The developer, Herman Martinus, shares a public roadmap, and the features already available are basically all you can ask from a blogging platform; Bear is made to write blog posts, not wondering what your website should look like.

If anyone reading this wants to start a blog in 2022¹ but are wondering which platform to go with, I think Bear should be shortlisted:² it’s fast, easy to use, and has everything needed to start blogging right away.

Speaking of blogging platforms and focusing on writing, I recently read Tom MacWright’s 2019 post How to blog, and I liked his train of thoughts regarding software and tools:

Once you choose the technology that runs your blog, use it. Don’t replace it, ever. Never ever rewrite it.

If you’re trying to blog, write. […]

Stay out of the blog configuration, templates, plugins, and whatnot. […]

Most people are unable to finish their side projects or focus on their side hustles, because they get distracted and sidetracked by tinkering and other things that increase the complexity of the project, instead of working toward the original goal.

These words feel directly aimed at me: I am indeed guilty when it comes to getting distracted and spending way too much time on the little technical details, and not enough on the first purpose of a blog: writing.