Like my home title says, I am a part-time coder. I even like to think I am fairly good at it, no comments required to burst my bubble, thanks!

What I don't use and why

Nobody who has given a guess got the software right, but I will tell you why I don't use the two most popular guesses.

Wordpress 

WordPress has to the the first one as it's the most popular guess.  WordPress is great, if you're not interested in having to do anything but just buy a domain name, install some software and blog, then it's the best, easiest, and there are hosting providers as common as muck you can get from just a couple of £s each month to tens of £s per month depending on your needs.

With WordPress, you can install hundreds, probably thousands, of free and paid-for themes to make your site look the way you want, and there are tens of thousands of plugins to add functionality to your site.  

Bottom line is that it's good for everyone who just wants to blog.  WordPress has two options. Over at Wordpress.org you can download the software and install it on your hosting account, free.  To be honest, though, any reasonable hosting provider will have software that just allows you to install it directly, problem solved. Alternatively, you have WordPress.com, this is the paid service from the makers of WordPress who provide everything, WordPress, hosting, a domain name and everything else you need.

For me, though, the part-time coder who likes to tinker, code and be much more precise when it comes to design, WordPress is not such a great option.

Ghost

Ghost blog is a great alternative to WordPress, it's just a simple but very powerful blog and nothing else.  You can find it at (link: https://ghost.org/ text: ghost.org).  The reason I don't use it, quite simple: not very flexible, it's too simple for me, and it uses a language I am not that familiar with.  One more important thing, it's not simple to install if you just want to take the software for free and use it on your hosting account. Nobody supports it on standard, cheap hosting accounts.  You can host it on Ghost's own platform, but jeez, it's expensive!

What do I use then?

I used a Content Management System called (link: https://getkirby.com/ text: GetKirby).  It uses the same language as WordPress (PHP), and it's essentially the same, but there are very few themes and plugins.  Everything is provided to allow you to build a website of whatever you want; you just need to build it, and that is what I have done here.  This site was built all by my pretty little hands.

I love it, it's light, easy to work with, you can use it on any hosting service, and it's easy to back up.

Look, I could go on about this all day, but that is not what the site is about, so I will leave it there.  If you want to know more or have questions, [email protected]