178 lines
6.1 KiB
Markdown
178 lines
6.1 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "De-Google my blog - How to blog in 2020 without Google"
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date: 2020-05-20T10:41:56-03:00
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lastmod: 2020-05-25T10:41:56-03:00
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tags : [ "degoogle", "devops", "meta", "hugo", ]
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---
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Hi everyone!
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Right now I have Google almost completely out of my life, but some of the top commentaries of my
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posts in [/r/degoogle](https://reddit.com/r/degoogle) and [/r/selfhosted](https://reddit.com/r/selfhosted) were "Your blog still uses google for resources lol",
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so I needed to change that.
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*Shame.*
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In my old blog, the features that used Google where:
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1) Disquss comments
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2) The Ghost theme
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**Before we begin, I want to let you know that all these fixes have been applied, so you are currently
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experiencing the final result.**
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# Fixing comments
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I was using disquss to handle comments, since it is what everyone recommends. I checked the network
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resources on my site and found something horrible: A bunch of random calls to a bunch of external
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addresses, not just Google. Since I care about my reader's privacy, disquss had to go. Someone in
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/r/degoogle suggested "Commento", and it looked like it was exactly what I needed: A free and opensource,
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self-hosted alternative to disquss, and it also had an official docker release!
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According to their [documentation](https://docs.commento.io/installation/self-hosting/on-your-server/docker.html):
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```yaml
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version: '3'
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services:
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server:
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image: registry.gitlab.com/commento/commento
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restart: always
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ports:
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- 5000:8080
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environment:
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COMMENTO_ORIGIN: https://commento.rogs.me
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COMMENTO_PORT: 8080
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COMMENTO_POSTGRES: postgres://postgres:mysupersecurepassword@db:5432/commento?sslmode=disable
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COMMENTO_SMTP_HOST: my-mail-host.com
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COMMENTO_SMTP_PORT: 587
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COMMENTO_SMTP_USERNAME: mysmtpusername@mail.com
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COMMENTO_SMTP_PASSWORD: mysmtppassword
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COMMENTO_SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS: mysmtpfromaddress@mail.com
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depends_on:
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- db
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db:
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image: postgres
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restart: always
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environment:
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POSTGRES_DB: commento
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POSTGRES_USER: postgres
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POSTGRES_PASSWORD: mysupersecurepassword
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volumes:
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- postgres_data_volume:/var/lib/postgresql/data
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volumes:
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postgres_data_volume:
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```
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I created an NGINX reverse proxy for port 5000 and that was it! Commento was up and running without much
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issue.
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Then, I configured my blog and added the simple universal snippet on my blog posts template pages:
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```html
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<script defer src="https://commento.rogs.me/js/commento.js"></script>
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<div id="commento"></div>
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```
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# Is that it?
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Yes, as easy as that. Comments were up and running in less than 20 mins, with no random external resources.
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*Sweet!*
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I could even import my old disquss comments in Commento! I was a bit sad to lose them, but they were
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just fine!
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So now that my comments were ready, I could move forward to fixing Ghost
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# The Ghost theme
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This was quite simple. I forked the git repo for my blog theme and began removing everything regarding
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Google fonts. You can check the final results here: https://git.rogs.me/me/blog.rogs.me-ghost-theme
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## But that's not entirely it!
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My ghost blog was big and bloated, and I wasn't really enjoying it anymore, so I wanted to move it to something more
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static, fast, and reliable, so I moved everything to Hugo!
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## What is [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/)?
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According to their website:
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> Hugo is one of the most popular open-source static site generators. With its amazing speed and flexibility, Hugo makes building websites fun again.
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So it is a static site generator, that uses .md files for content.
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## Why did I chose Hugo?
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- Hugo needs no dependencies. I just had to do `sudo pacman -S hugo` and no further dependencies were
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needed
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- Hugo doesn't need a database since it is *static*. That means that my blog could load *A LOT* faster
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(and it does!)
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- Hugo uses a lot less resources than Ghost. For Ghost I needed a docker running with a database, with Hugo
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I just serve the files directly with NGINX, just like a regular plain HTML website.
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## And that is what you are seeing right now!
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This blog is 100% running with Hugo. Migration was super easy, since Ghost also uses Markdown files. I just needed to match the URLs so old posts wouldn't break and comments worked like they did before. I chose a simple template, migrated, deployed to my server and that was it!
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You can check the code for my blog here: https://gitlab.com/rogs/rogs.me
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My theme: https://github.com/athul/archie
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I was pretty satisfied with the migration and how things were coming along.
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# One extra thing: [Matomo Analytics](https://matomo.org/)
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For Analytics, of course I wasn't going to use Google Analytics, so Matomo was an easy choice. Here is my
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configuration:
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```yaml
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version: "3"
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services:
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app:
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image: matomo:latest
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restart: always
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links:
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- db
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volumes:
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- "./config:/var/www/html/config:rw"
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- "./logs:/var/www/html/logs"
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ports:
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- "9000:80"
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db:
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image: mariadb:latest
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restart: always
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volumes:
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- "./mysql/runtime2:/var/lib/mysql"
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environment:
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- "MYSQL_DATABASE=matomo"
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- "MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=mysupersecurepassword"
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- "MYSQL_USER=matomo"
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- "MYSQL_PASSWORD=anothersupersecurepassword"
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```
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Again, another reverse proxy for port `9000` and Matomo was up and running!
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*My blog stats in Matomo*
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Matomo has everything I need, while respecting the users' privacy. If you haven't used it before, you should definitely check it out! I have used Google Analytics before, but Matomo seems more powerful to me.
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# Conclusion
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It isn't easy to run a website outside of Google, but with a little dedication it is possible. With tools
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like Matomo and Commento you can easily respect your user's privacy and get away from Google's "big
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brotherness".
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If you have any further suggestions, I'm always looking for more things to self-host and separate
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from big corporations.
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Until next time!
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