My First Post
I discovered Bear as of today, April 11, 2025. After using Ghost for my magazine, I decided I wanted a space to share my thoughts—independent of my magazine or social media. However, what I found was either too expensive or overly complex for what I wanted—just a simple place to share my thoughts. After a few hours of research, my search had concluded to no avail, and I didn't give it a second thought.
While scrounging a GitHub project, I stumbled across Bear as a 'happy accident'. I clicked on a user profile, leading me to their blog, and I read the published posts. It felt reminiscent of the early days of social media, such as Facebook updates from friends when they first emerged in the early 2000s. I had found it: Bear was that platform.
So, I signed up and made an account and quickly found that it was everything I had been looking for—simple, clean, and, best of all, minimalist. Its unique features immediately stood out: free, responsive, and lightweight microblogging with custom themes, RSS/Atom feeds, custom domains, the platform's availability on any device, and more.
The setup process involved setting up a blog name and a bear blog.dev subdomain, to which I chose 'benjiforster' as my moniker. Then, I established an email and password to protect my site. I was welcomed by a straightforward interface that featured a row of buttons: 'Home', 'Nav', 'Posts', 'Pages', 'Themes', and 'Emails'. I clicked on 'Posts' and then selected 'New Post', which housed a simple text box where I could write without distractions. There were no ads, trackers, or cookies—just me and my words on the screen.
And that's how I found myself here, closing my first post on Bear with excitement for the many more to come. Now, I will set up my blog, and I can't wait to share more with all of you. Stay tuned!