SchmidtPress began as a small experiment, a handmade alternative to the bloated platforms that never felt like home. What emerged is a fast, lightweight blogging system that does exactly what I need and nothing I do not.
SchmidtPress, a tiny blog engine that does exactly what i need
For years I lived with a tiny blog system that barely deserved the name. It was something I stitched together in a hurry, a little HTML here, a bit of JavaScript there, a small stack of Markdown files, and an unhealthy amount of optimism. It worked in the way an aging bicycle with a protesting brake still technically works. It moved when pushed, it delivered me from place to place, yet every small jolt made it obvious that the whole setup endured thanks to momentum, hope, and not much else.
Over time, the limitations became impossible to ignore. Each new post felt like I was negotiating with an increasingly temperamental contraption. The styling was fragile, the filtering needed coaxing, and every improvement required reading code I had forgotten I wrote. At some point I realised that if I wanted to take my writing seriously, I needed a system that treated the publishing process with the same respect I put into the text itself. Not a CMS with fifty dependencies, not a templating engine masquerading as a lifestyle choice, not a subscription platform eager to turn my own words into someone else’s revenue stream.
What I wanted was simple: A clean, lightweight, local-first system that did not demand attention, maintenance, updates, or allegiance. Something quiet and dependable. Something that let me write, publish, and move on with my day without feeling like I had just negotiated a trade agreement with a web framework. And once that became clear, SchmidtPress practically built itself
So I built one. And I called it SchmidtPress.
The Philosophy Behind SchmidtPress
SchmidtPress was born out of a simple need: a blogging system that is fast, minimal, and completely under my control. No database. No backend. No fragile hosting stack. Just static Markdown files, a lightweight index, and a small, elegant JavaScript engine that renders the entire blog in your browser.
It is everything I wanted and nothing I did not: • Markdown for writing • JavaScript for rendering • Zero server-side magic • Instant loading • Client-side search • Tag and language filters • Full permalinks • A clean layout that I can style however I want
It behaves like a modern single-page application, but without the architectural heaviness. The entire system fits in a handful of files, loads instantly, and reads like something that should have always existed.
Why Build My Own Instead of Using Something Ready-Made?
Because all the alternatives come with baggage. WordPress is powerful, but it needs constant maintenance and carries the weight of its ecosystem with it. Big cloud platforms want me to hand over my content in exchange for a “service”. Static site generators always seem to assume I want a thousand features and a build pipeline that feels like I am compiling a nuclear reactor.
I wanted none of that. I wanted something that: • lives in a folder • travels with me • works offline • can be hosted anywhere • never breaks when the internet sneezes • does not need a marketing department to explain how to use it
SchmidtPress does exactly that.
Features, The Way I Actually Use Them
Markdown-First
I write everything in Markdown. SchmidtPress reads these files, extracts the front matter, and renders them into HTML on the client side. No conversion step. No plugins. No build process.
Real Permalinks
Every post can have its own permalink, making sharing effortless and avoiding the dreaded ?post=something URLs unless I explicitly want them.
Tag and Language Filters
My writing is multilingual, so SchmidtPress makes it easy to filter by language. Tags work in the same way: click, filter, read.
Lightning Fast Search
A small search input filters titles and content instantly. No database queries, no indexing daemon, no delay.
Instant Publishing
Drop a Markdown file into the posts folder, refresh the page, done. That is the entire workflow.
And the Best Part
The whole thing is mine. No company can shut it down. No service can deprecate it. No cloud provider can lock me out. It belongs to me the way a notebook or a typewriter belongs to its owner.
A Blogging System With Personality
SchmidtPress is small, handmade, and honest. It feels like building a quiet digital retreat, practical, uncluttered, and free from unnecessary noise. It never pretends to be anything beyond its purpose, and that restraint is precisely what makes it strong. There is a real pleasure in using tools you have shaped yourself, tools that do exactly what you need and nothing extra. SchmidtPress is that kind of tool, a reminder that software does not have to be complex to be good, and that sometimes the best systems are the ones you can fully understand in an afternoon.
And this is exactly why I built it myself instead of surrendering my writing to yet another cloud platform. Cloud systems promise convenience, but what they actually deliver is dependency. Once you move your content into someone else’s infrastructure, you hand over control, privacy, and stability in one neat package. Your blog becomes “their service”, your data becomes “their asset”, and every outage, pricing change, and policy shift instantly becomes your problem. Cloud platforms centralise power, swallow your autonomy, and quietly funnel wealth toward companies that would love nothing more than to lock you in forever.
SchmidtPress is the opposite of that. No vendor, no subscription, no server farm halfway across the planet deciding when my words are available. Just a simple, local system that belongs entirely to me. In a world obsessed with outsourcing everything to the cloud, building something small and local is not just a technical choice, it is an act of independence.