How I Came to Bear: Goldilocks and the Three Blogs
Well, it’s that time of the decade again: I’m blogging. This platform is called Bear. You’ll know it when you see the ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
I’m not exactly sure how I got here, but it goes something like this.
First, I visited Wordpress. Then I remembered that there is a WordPress.org and a WordPress.com and that they are different things. That annoyed me.
So I looked into Ghost, which looked great, but expensive for someone who just left Squarespace.
Then I researched Jekyll and Hugo. Then I researched themes for Jekyll and Hugo. Then I found themes for Jekyll and Hugo that were inspired by something called “Bear Blog.” Then I looked up “Bear Blog.”
And that’s when I thought: This looks cool. I must be wrong.
But I wasn’t. Bear is cool.
Then I thought: If this exists, maybe there are even better minimalist blogging platforms out there. Maybe someone’s even captured the spirit of Tumblr. Maybe the Internet had finally been saved.
And that’s how I found out about Micro.blog and Pika and Write.as and Blot and Mataroa and Montaigne and Quotion and Scribbles and Pagecord.
So I dabbled.
Micro.blog ● ○ ○ ○ ○
The first was Micro.blog. And, listen, I gave it my best shot. I even paid for the basic tier—which is required to even use the service. But I still don’t even really know what Micro.blog is. A blog? A micro blog? A bookmarking tool? For me, it was mostly a headache. I never understood the app or how to use it. It was just a very gitty experience.
Pika Pages ● ● ● ○ ○
Next I tried Pika, which was friendlier. One theme, plenty of colors and typefaces to make it your own. Any customization beyond that, however, gets real gitty, real fast. Ultimately, I couldn’t get the page to look how I wanted. And it was hard to get an idea of what a Pika page could be because it was hard to find examples of other Pika sites.
Bear Blog ● ● ● ● ○
So, I returned to Bear Blog—or is it just Bear? If this is up for debate, I’d cast a vote for Bearblog, one word.
Nevertheless, Bearblog is the Goldilocks zone. It’s not too basic. It’s not too gitty. It’s just right. It reminds me of Tumblr. Simple. Lightweight. Doesn’t get in its own way. Built-in discovery. Easy-to-install themes that are also highly customizable. I don’t know how to code, but I love nothing more in this life than recklessly tinkering with some CSS.
That’s what sets Bearblog apart: it’s fun.
I host my mixtape club, Green Bananas, on Substack. But Substack is almost too polished. It feels like it demands something formal, professional, and clever. And I’m nothing if not professional.
But Bearblog is just so refreshingly casual. And, consequently, it has reminded me of something very important: writing can be so much easier when you don’t feel pressure to be clever all the time.
Loose Change
- If Pika offered a simple option to change the width of the blog, it would have made a huge difference for me. Most blogs—and perhaps websites in general—do a really poor job at dialing in their line lengths (which are almost always too long).
- Pagecord, in addition to being easy to use and gorgeous, actually does offer a basic site-width modification options: narrow, standard, or wide.
- Pagecord’s creator, Olly Headey, reached out to me to let me know he’s working on adding a more Markdown-friendly interface. (He noticed I had dumped a bunch of Markdown into a sample post to no avail.)
- Also, Pagecord’s default typeface is my dear friend: Inter.
- So, I guess I’ll be keeping my eye on Pagecord.
- Honorable mention to Pagecord.
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