Blog toolchain overly complex, lacking open-source modern alternatives
Problem
When combining Gleam, Org-Mode, and Pandoc to build a blog, users face complex toolchains, slow publishing workflows, and difficult configuration; additionally, there is a lack of open-source blogging platforms that balance ease-of-use with modern features, forcing users to choose between WordPress security risks, Ghost's inferior editor, or self-maintained Pandoc scripts.
Pain points
- Org-mode publishing slows down for large blogs
- Gleam+Org-Mode+Pandoc stack is overly complex; Org-mode can generate HTML natively
- No open-source blogging platform offers both modern editor experience and strong security
- Org-mode HTML compile options and keybindings are hard to remember
Questions to verify
- Do you feel current static blog generators lack sufficient balance between ease-of-use and customization?
- Are you looking for an open-source modern blogging platform with a good editor experience and security?
- Does your blog scale affect your performance needs for publishing tools?
Evidence
quote · @匿名
I don't understand why gleam and pandoc are in there. Org-mode can already generate HTML. A little bit of Emacs Lisp turns it into a blogging engine.
quote · @匿名
Current iteration of my blog is pure Elisp (org-publish). It is very simple. I like that I understand effectively whole thing bottom-up, and making any changes to machinery by advising Elisp is ridiculously easy. Being able to export the whole buffer with exact looks and feel of my Emacs theme is cherry-on-top. I like the overall feel of the thing, it has everything I need and nothing more. My only gripe is that it is quite slow. My blog is pretty small, so having to wait on Emacs to build the whole thing is not fun. If my blog ever gets in the range of needing to compile hundred plus posts, I'll be seriously looking at alternatives. But until then, I get to enjoy just writing posts and exporting them with single keystroke.
quote · @匿名
I prefer to write words not code. I use WordPress because it hides all the complexity and lets me just write instead of messing with Markdown (or an entire separate system), CI pipelines, custom markup hacks for page features, Emacs cruft, etc.. Yeah WordPress is a security nightmare, but Ghost's editor sucks and there's no viable open-source alternatives with modern security and features.
quote · @匿名
I use org-mode (mainly for vocabulary-building in English and other languages), but I steer clear of its complicated html-compiling functions, as I have a hard time remembering all the different options and keybindings. I also prefer Elixir to Gleam, but I still think this is a pretty neat setup!
Disclaimer: this card is distilled by AI from community discussions as “pain point evidence”. It is a starting point for need analysis and validation, not a “validated market need”. AI has analytical limits; please open the original discussion above to manually verify before key decisions.