July 7, 2015 — github blogging

'(Using Gist As Your Blog)

Github’s Gist is almost good enough as a blog. If you don’t want to take the time to set up your own blog, you could probably get away with using gists. As an example, this is a pretty decent index display.

Where it shines

  • nice comment system (example)

  • markdown support

  • auto-abstracts (shortened posts in index)

  • built-in editor or use git

  • store associated files with your article in a real git repo

  • nothing to host yourself

Where it falls short

  • no global feed

  • people don’t expect it to serve as your blog

  • gets cluttered with other snippets

  • google will not index these well

  • no analytics

  • it seems unlikely that someone will like your post and decide to go explore your other gists

Conclusion

Gists are great. Even if you set up a real blog, you’ll still want to use gists to host code samples.