Self-Hosted Markdown Blog Solutions

Static Site Generators + Web Server

1. Hugo with Caddy

   FROM klakegg/hugo:0.107.0 AS build
   COPY . /src
   RUN hugo --minify
   
   FROM caddy:2.6.4-alpine
   COPY --from=build /src/public /usr/share/caddy
   

   • Features:
     • Single-binary deployment
     • Automatic HTTPS
     • HTTP/3 support

2. Jekyll + Nginx

   server {
       listen 80;
       server_name blog.example.com;
       root /var/www/blog/_site;
   
       location / {
           try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
       }
   }
   

Self-Hosted CMS Options

• Ghost (Pro)

  • Requirements:

    • Node.js 16/18
    • MySQL 8

  • Deployment:

    ghost install --local
    

• Strapi + Markdown Plugin

  • Markdown field type

  • REST/GraphQL API

  • Docker-compose example:

    services:
      postgres:
        image: postgres:15
      strapi:
        image: strapi/strapi:4.11.7
        depends_on:
          - postgres
    

Markdown Editors with Self-Hosting

1. Jupyter Notebooks

   • Convert .ipynb to Markdown
   • JupyterHub deployment

2. Outline (Knowledge base)

   • Markdown WYSIWYG
   • Docker deployment

Deployment Environments

Automation & CI/CD

# .github/workflows/deploy.yml
name: Deploy Blog
on: [push]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Build Hugo
        run: hugo --minify
      - name: Deploy to SSH
        uses: appleboy/[email protected]
        with:
          host: ${{ secrets.SSH_HOST }}
          key: ${{ secrets.SSH_KEY }}
          source: "public/"
          target: "/var/www/blog"

Security Considerations

• SSL/TLS with Let's Encrypt

  certbot --nginx -d blog.example.com
  

• Firewall rules (UFW example):

  ufw allow 22/tcp
  ufw allow 80/tcp
  ufw allow 443/tcp
  ufw enable
  

• Regular backups

  # Daily backup script
  0 2 * * * tar -czf /backups/blog-$(date +\%F).tar.gz /var/www/blog
  

Monitoring & Maintenance

• Prometheus + Grafana for metrics

• Logrotate configuration:

  /var/log/nginx/*.log {
      daily
      missingok
      rotate 14
      compress
      delaycompress
      notifempty
      create 0640 www-data adm
      sharedscripts
  }
  

• Systemd Service example for Hugo:

  [Unit]
  Description=Hugo Blog Service
  After=network.target
  
  [Service]
  User=bloguser
  WorkingDirectory=/var/www/blog
  ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/hugo server --bind 0.0.0.0 --baseURL https://blog.example.com
  Restart=always
  
  [Install]
  WantedBy=multi-user.target
  

Recommended Stacks

1. Simple: Hugo + Caddy + Docker
2. Full CMS: Ghost + MySQL + Cloudflare Tunnel
3. Dynamic: Strapi + Next.js + AWS Lightsail

Alternative Approaches:

• Cloudflare Pages + Git (Managed self-hosting)