These awesome products and services make this website and publishing possible. I use, enjoy and thoroughly recommend them.
If you have a product or service you'd like me to try, and potentially independently review at my discretion, please do get in touch.
Hosting
These provider are the only places any data that you share with me are stored, on servers within the EU or on my personal and private computer and peripheral devices, for personal contact and communication use only.
Europe now has the infamous GDPR laws for data-privacy and ownership, which are onerous for understanding where data can go and be, and I feel are equally a good example to the world for a necessary awareness on the respect for privacy, in a civilised society reliant on trust.
I specifically do not use any non-EU services for hosting this website and the absolute minimum of 3rd-party services for this website and with encrypted secure connections between each, for your confidence that all communications we have and content we share privately, are kept private and contained to the best of my abilities.
For any concerns with non-EU or privacy respecting 3rd-party services, I recommend browsing, as I also do, with Vivaldi or Firefox.
- Website: Hetzner, Germany — €20 sign-up credit link
- Email: Hetzner, Germany & Mailgun, EU
- Domain name: Namecheap (registration only)
- Domain name servers (DNS): Cloudflare (including firewall proxy)
- Backups: Wasabi, EU
This setup works well for me and makes hosting a Ghost blog, among other apps, very low-cost.
If you just want to get started on a blog and think about other apps later, then Digital Press is an equally great place to get started for free!
With Digital Press all the hosting and backups done for you, and you can use for free, for as long as you like while drafting your site, before considering their paid options or alternatives like my self-hosting setup.
Software
I prefer the confidence in privacy with self-hosting, and transparency of peer-reviewed open-source software with their reputational interest for security.
- Operating Systems: macOS & Ubuntu, Debian GNU/Linux
- Server admin: Cloudron
- Writing: Ulysses
- Publishing: Ghost with the Casper Theme
Payments
3rd-party content
- Imagery: Shutterstock, Unsplash, Icons8, Pexels
- Sound: Spotify, Soundcloud
- Video: YouTube, Vimeo
All other content, imagery, graphics, code, files, templates, videos & audio are my original unique creations, reporting & curation. Copyright © marcusquinn.com.
This website is an independent personal project. Blogging is something I encourage every person or brand should find value in publishing, to grow alongside your career, creations and life.
You can do the same with this step-by-step guide to using Ghost for your blog. I use and recommend all the above platforms and services for their ease of use, value and reliability.
My experience has all been made possible by the great people I work with, and has resulted in our latest work; the Brandlight platform for multilingual international ecommerce. Please do take a look if you're in an organisation with interests and influence for building better systems to work with the world.
To follow my online adventures, with advice on creative technology, building a brand, ethical business, ecommerce and online security, find me on Twitter...