I'm leaving Hashnode

Back when I started this blog in 2023 (I can't believe it's been three years!), I was looking for a platform where I could host my blog with minimal fuss. I had a look around and found Hashnode - it fit the bill perfectly. I could write my articles in a pretty decent, easy-to-use editor, I had analytics so I could see which of my articles was getting viewed, I could even back up all my articles to a Github repo, all for free.

If you've read Cory Doctorow's book Enshittification (if you haven't, I highly recommend it!), you'll know where this is going. Hashnode have been making some changes on their platform lately - subtle things like changing the layout of my blog (I didn't mind it, but it got me wondering what was going on), removing the ability for folks to leave comments, adding "discussion" areas to the site and so on and so forth. To the surprise of probably no-one, I got an email last week saying that some of their features are now locked behind a subscription. This includes custom domains, backing up to Github and being able to change the layout of my blog, all pretty essential features to me.

Personally, I think they're shooting themselves in the foot - Hashnode is built for developers and the first question I asked myself was "what would it take for me to host this myself now that Hashnode is putting a paywall up?" and I bet there are others asking themselves the same question. Making the users dependent on the platform and then asking for money to be able to keep using it is a classing enshittification move and it's disappointing, but not surprising in this day and age.

I had already coded up half a blog with help from AI not too long ago, so I've just run with it - this blog runs on Next.js app router with CSS modules hosted on Netlify and pre-builds all the pages from simple markdown files so the site is completely static and therefore really fast. I'm in control of what appears on the page and how and I can add my own domain and even have free analytics. I don't really see how I lose...

I have yet to add a mailing list back in so if you signed up to my mailing list previously, you'll have to be patient while I figure out how to set that up (if you have any ideas, let me know!). I do have an RSS feed if that's your kind of jam, as that was pretty straightforward to add.

There will be more updates coming and not just in the way of posts - I know the layout and styling is pretty basic right now and I want to do more with it but I'm trying my best not to overwhelm myself because then I'll end up in decision paralysis land and nothing will get done. I'll share articles on social media as usual so keep your eyes peeled!