This blog is built using a static-site generator named Pelican. It converts the posts you write in Markdown directly to HTML files, which happens on your machine at "compile-time". This means there's no dynamic page generation on each HTTP request, which is fine (even preferred) for a blog-like website. Pelican is written in Python and using it feels Pythonic (it uses configuration-as-code) which is great for any hardcore Pythonista. I've just recently also added a commenting system and will explain here what the blog's components are.
Pelican is very flexible allowing you to modify the blog to your needs. A number of quality plugins exist, of which I currently use summery, allowing me to specify the exact text shown on the index page under post summary, and yuicompressor, which at compile-time, minifies all CSS and JS files.
There exist a number of Pelican themes. I'm using the Clean Blog theme which I've slightly modified. It's clean and simple, and hopefully won't end up looking outdated in a couple of years.
The blog is hosted on GitHub Pages which is tightly integrated with the GitHub repository hosting the HTML files, allowing the deployment of the files solely using Git (git push and that's it). The process of writing and publishing a new post is simple. Write the post, compile the HTML files, push them to the GitHub repository. Make a Github Pages blog with Pelican is the tutorial I've followed to set this up.
I've also setup my own domain name. I've registered it at GoDaddy and then followed the Set Up SSL on Github Pages With Custom Domains for Free tutorial which uses Cloudflare to setup https.
Recently, I've also added the commenting system. A usual choice of the platform would be Disqus but I wanted find an alternative because of privacy concerns. Personally, I also don't find looks of Disqus attractive. I've instead chosen Isso which I self-host with one of the cloud providers.
Isso integration to Pelican is quite simple but takes time to set everything up. Client-side, you only add a couple of lines of HTML/JavaScript code to your Pelican theme. Server-side, you have to setup an Nginx reverse-proxy which sends requests to your Isso application (I run it inside of a Docker container), setup some kind of Certificate Authority (in my case Let's Encrypt) so you don't send user's comments over the wire unencrypted, and a SMTP send-mail server if you want to your commentators to be notified of replies via email.
All in all, this takes more time to setup than using some out-of-the-box solution (i.e. Wordpress). But the process was quite fun and at the end, the blog is more customizable, privacy-conscious, and efficient.