building a home on Bear
I moved my blog over from micro.blog to Bear blog three weeks ago. I didn’t write about it at that time just in case it didn’t stick—I like trying new things, but I never know if I’ll end up staying with them—but after these few weeks, I feel it would be remiss not to shoutout to how much I’m enjoying it here.
I actually didn’t have any objections to micro.blog as a platform, and it’s cheaper than Bear for me as I’m on the micro.one plan, but what I can say for Bear is that it just feels better. It feels more aligned with what I value, and more like a place I’d like to settle down long-term. Everything in its manifesto resonates with me and what I’m looking for in an internet home: simplicity, longevity, no selling out, just a space for humans and their words.
I was also very taken by how fuss-free it is to style your blog. The home page and templates are very customisable, and you can drop external CSS stylesheets in and add your own code super easily. I spent a very enjoyable few hours this morning playing around with some of my favourite fonts and colour palettes before landing on Flexoki, for now. I might hop around depending on my mood; other colour schemes I enjoy include Catppuccin, Nord and the beautiful Rose Pine for when I’m feeling pink. Bear’s settings make it trivially easy to customise these little details while keeping things minimal enough that I’m not tempted to go down a rabbit hole of theme tweaking.
The free tier is very generous and really enough for anyone who wants a blog—I upgraded to use my custom domain as well as to support the project, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the free tier to anyone just getting started with building their own site. It’s just a nice place to be.