For the zero number of people who regularly read this blog, you may notice that it looks different. That's because I’ve abandoned Wordpress, and rebuilt it using Jekyll.
Why? Well, because of an article recently published by Development Seed. And because I’m easily impressed. It’s a very thought provoking article. Here’s a link –> CMS Free Websites.
I’ve decided I’ll give Jekyll a whirl, and thus far, I’m mostly impressed. It’s perfectly suited to a blog like this.
The markup is extremely easy to manipulate; Source looks nice, because it’s exactly what I created, instead of markup generated at runtime by a complex templating system. For me, that means way fewer collisions. No heavy lifting to theme a site that doesn’t need the awesome feature set of an application framework like Drupal. Instead, I can focus on that which most interests me; Front end development and design.
The fact that Jekyll doesn’t rely on a database also means that I’m free to quickly move it anywhere I like. There is, essentially, no migration process. Peace of mind for me, as I’m frequently indecisive about hosting.
Working within the limits of Jekyll means finding services that, independently, fulfill the need for a particular feature. This atomized approach means that site features can be migrated to new sites or content management systems, revised over and over again, or discarded entirely; All individually, all independently. Very fucking cool. It’s like website legos.
For thedrearlight.com, I’m using:
- Disqus for comments
- Tapir for search
- Flickr for image hosting
- Feedburner for rss
- Github Pages for http
I really like the idea of a web driven by well crafted services that are then cobbled together into a public facing site. If websites are, at core, about identity, this strategy makes a lot of sense. Websites become the aggregate one’s prescence on the web, a domain for cohesion. This, I think, is what most resonated with me while reading Development Seed’s article.
Ultimately, this new/old-school approach to web building will allow me to experiment more freely with CSS and Javascript here. I might even be able to shed some of the anxiety I’ve developed while trying to always use the most contemporary solution. If Drupal falls by the wayside (which it won’t), I can rest easy, content that this .html solution is already out of fashion.
Here’s a photo:
