How this website works

This website uses a simple service called Blot. The pages and files are ordinary documents in a folder on my computer. Dropbox shares the folder with Blot. Blot serves the files as a pleasantly-designed website.

It’s wonderfully easy. There are none of the headaches of hosting, installing, configuring and maintaining a CMS such as Wordpress. I’m free from smothering commercial providers like Wix. Blot’s cheap.

I write the pages in Markdown, using iA Writer, my favourite writing app, but the pages could be Word documents or HTML files. PDFs and pictures can be dropped into the folder. Edits and new pages sync instantly, and the website updates in seconds.

Blot does require a little nerdiness — the documentation’s not written for technophobes — and a little more if you want to configure things your own way. (If you’re confident editing HTML and CSS you can customise the templates. I haven’t needed to do that.) But Blot’s owner David Merfield is extraordinarily responsive and helpful. It’s been geeky fun putting a website together.