58 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
58 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: Switching to a Static Site Generator
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date: 2019-08-05T01:13:58-07:00
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tags: ["Website"]
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---
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A long time ago, I decided to try out Jekyll for my website. However, it all felt too
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convoluted: the ruby gems I needed to install, the configuration options for the site,
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the theming. I was given a template that already made several design decisions for me,
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and I didn't like it. So I wrote my own back end and front end, and was happy with it
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for a few years, periodically updating the look of the site. I even made a post on
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the site, called "Ditching Jekyll", with the glorious contents:
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> This morning, my guilt finally took over and I ditched the idea of using Jekyll.
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For the better, probably. I sat down to code, and got up several hours later,
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victorious! Thanks to a handy tutorial on Python and Flask written by Miguel
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Grinberg, found here ["here" is not a link], I wrote a bare bones website
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to host my silly blog posts and projects.
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Recently, however, I started to do a little more writing for the blog. My posts
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grew fairly long, and started to include nontrivial pieces of code, ones
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that I couldn't write and be sure without checking that they worked. Additionally,
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I felt an increasing need for version control. This was all very difficult
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through a custom backend, which doesn't come for free with features such as
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tracking changes and including code snippets. My workflow boiled town to the following:
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1. Write the skeleton post in a local Markdown file
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2. Write the relevant source code in a proper source file
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3. Copy-paste the new source code into the Markdown post.
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4. Copy-paste the full post into my custom website's input box.
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There are two steps where parts of a writing project can become out of sync
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with each other! Changing the source code means that you eventually have to
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update the Markdown file with the changes, and modifying the Markdown file
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also means that eventually, you'll have upload the new file to the website.
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It's inefficient, and there's a lot of redundancy.
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With this in mind, I think there are many advantages for using
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a static site generator for a personal website / blog. They are as follows:
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1. Content is first class. Your posts are files you can edit in any way you like,
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rather than opaque entities stored in a database. This also has the added benefit
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of allowing you to properly use version control with your posts.
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2. A static site generator can support complex multi-file setups. It took me
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about half an hour to configure my posts to pull code snippets from other
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files on disk, thus freeing me from having to copy-paste source into my posts.
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3. A custom back end is overcomplicating things. You write your own code to render
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posts, your own code to log the user in. This way you're not only spending
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more time than you need, but you're also adding more surface area for possible
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errors and bugs.
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4. A static site generator allows for the re-use of ideas and code. Rather than
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reinventing your own solution for tagging, rendering Markdown, syntax highlighting,
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and the like, you get these solutions out of the box, with a body of online
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questions and answers that have been generated over these very subjects.
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Having come to this conclusion, I will be switching my website to [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/),
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which seems to be easier to configure and customize, without making too many assumptions
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about what you want in your website.
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