It has been almost eight years since I last posted something. Since 2010, I’ve usually written a post around the time I switched blogging platforms, or moved to static HTML. And yes, it’s that time again, but this time with a twist.
Over the past five or six years I’ve been learning Go, building backends, frontends, and whatever sits in between. I did that at DCSO and Kelvin Green, and on the side, on weekends and late nights, I’ve been tinkering with my own blogging and forum software.
With Claude’s help, I’ve finally managed to get it ready. I do use AI assistants, because I’m nearing 50 and I’m a bit tired of not getting things done. But unlike a lot of people producing slop, I know what’s in the code, because I write most of it myself. The only part that’s truly generated is the front-end, since that’s the most tedious bit.
I built a WordPress replacement. (I know, plenty of those already exist.) What I wanted was a single platform that combines blogging, web pages, forums, forms, an API, templating, and a community site. The idea is that you don’t need anything else; it’s all included. Add-ons or plugins might come later, but I’d rather build things in. No PHP or Python, no Node, and no heavy JavaScript libraries: just Go, with as few dependencies as possible. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t like adding just-another-package.
It isn’t finished yet, but it’s getting close. It also won’t be open source, because I want to build a service and a product around it. Instead, I plan to support and contribute to the open-source projects I depend on as much as I can. I’d rather be closed from the start than be the asshole who open-sources something, then cripples the license and closes it again.
The biggest problem right now is finding a good name. It’s 2026, and all the good names are taken. Even the random ones, apparently. At company HQ, which happens to be my home office, the working name is “Portal”.