This could be an unpopular opinion here at HN so getting ready for the downvotes.<p>IMO, the fastest way to set up a blog is using WordPress. You could be up and running in less than 2 minutes on WordPress.com. Takes a bit longer for self hosted blog.
I second Wordpress. It is easy, default themes look nice. You can do anything with a bit of customization and even download hundreds of thousands of premade themes inexpensively.<p>Especially this if you want to brand it yourself with your own domain and care at all about SEO.<p>I personally use Laravel Forge which in addition to its main use case of Laravel server management, give me one-click Wordpress installs on my AWS EC2 servers. And then route53 for the domains.<p>You could also easily launch a Wordpress server with AWS Lightsail and you do not need a very powerful server unless you become really popular. And even then there are pretty good free caching plugins, some installed by default.
A static site generator and github pages (that way Microsoft foots the bill!)<p>If that’s too complicated, you can join a writefreely federated instance, like <a href="https://write.as" rel="nofollow">https://write.as</a>, or self-host your own.<p>And if that’s too complicated, just use something like Medium (although I think they started adding paywalls to blogs)
Ghost - If you are <i>really</i> serious about writing and monetizing it. Not useful if you are not earning from your writing<p>Medium - If you are gonna write once in a year. or. you are happy putting your articles behind their paywall<p>dev.to - If you don't have a niche, just writing for the community whenever you feel<p>hashnode - If you prefer having custom domain, writing for beginners, love SEO, want to build personal brand, and a bit serious about technical writing.<p>SSG + Github Page - If you love getting your hands dirty in coding & willing to spend sometime to learn a new tech. (plus point, you have full freedom to design it in your <i>own</i> way)<p>- My self-hosted blog built with NextJs. <a href="https://pankajtanwar.in/blogs" rel="nofollow">https://pankajtanwar.in/blogs</a>