I’ve been meaning to get to this for some time. I wasn’t really ever sure how I’d build my blog. The choices were always between designing and building it all from scratch or throwing together some quick Wordpress hack. I was ready to install Wordpress in fact, having just finally relented and pressed the download button. However, as a developer, something just couldn’t let me do it. Maybe it was the headache thinking about all the blog spam and script kiddies scanning my server for a Wordpress vulnerabilities, or the fact that I have to use Wordpress’ schizophrenic procedural API just to edit my blog’s design, or maybe it was just the feeling of soul-crushing loss of dignity for using such a bland CMS. Ultimately this sudden gag reflex was enough to give me pause once more and think about this decision more carefully.
After another round of existential thought, I decided maybe I’d find a good compromise with a static-generated blog such Octopress. I’ve heard of Octopress before but this time I decided to really dig into it. Ultimately, the static blog idea seemed like a good fit, but I went with starting from Jekyll instead (the foundation from which Octopress builds upon) and using a pre-designed theme.
So far, I’ve already hacked it a fair amount to my liking, which was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be. Coming from a background of having used Assemble.io for several projects now, Jekyll felt very natural as a static content manager. I really wanted something developer-friendly but yet didn’t require me to write everything from scratch because who has time for that? Thankfully this solution provided the key balance of not being so much work that I put it off again and being customizable and hackable enough to please my perfectionist mind.
I will do another write up about how I used Jekyll and customized it. For now, this is enough blogging for me to feel like my website actually has some content on it.