netzfisch's ...wikibrain and blogpost taker

Jekyll jumpstart - switching back to static site generation

Blogging like a hacker suited me allways best, not really suprising because of my engineer background:

• So I started at the end of the last century with a hand made sites,
• later using some ruby/perl pre-processors webgen, WML,WPP,
• than switching to python based Leonardo and
• later to enki a leight weight rails blog engine.

I never touched the main stream systems like MoveableType or the successor WordPress, but used in various occasions Software as a Service (SaaS) like Blogger (long before it was aquired by google) and than Posterous, which just recently disappeard …

That way I left my content in various systems and locations and never got it really aggregated back. Nowadays with Google+, FourSquare and Twitter things are getting worse!

Sometimes I am realy tired searching for something I already commented, saved, etc. So my new content strategy aims chossing

• a neutral data storage (markdown) combined with a mobile first concept / responsive design,
• an independent and robust solution with flexible posibilities to realize my backlog and
• a variety of deployment options to choose from.

Finally it should not take me ages to get started. Sounds like back to the roots and probably partly it is. By time I will re-import and integrate worthfully old content. But now lets get in into it!

Jumpstart

Shortly I thought about using Octopress - “The Jekyll Mercedes”, but as it seemed to me relatively complex and the frontend design slow, I keept going the rough way. First read the Jekyll getting started section and have a look at some sites and source code, which could serve as template or good starting point to find your way:

• Tom Preston Werner (source) - minimalistic version from the Jekyll creator and github founder
• UberRobert (source) - two column Twitter Bootsrap (TB) mit “marketing speak Header” and very clean structured source code
• Nate Wieger (source) - two column TB basis with custom google search integration
• Adam Ralph (source) - two column TB basis with a static tag cloud

and many more in the Jekyll wiki.

Than bash $ gem install jekyll and customise Twitter Boostrap or head to Bootswatch for ready to use layouts.

Plugins and etextensions I used so far:

• Google Web Font and Font Awesome for social icons
• Logarithmic Tag Cloud
• Embedded Twitter Share Button and Timeline
• Google Share Button and +1 Button

Deployment

Ther are variety of options:

1. push to github and get version control - community participation for free
2. push to heroku and get additionally a full ruby stack
3. push to amazon S3 wiht CloudFront as Jeff Bezos also does and scale away
4. or just rsync the _site directory to your static webserver

Your choice, my favorites are GitHub:

$ git init
$ git add .
$ git commit -m 'initial blog commit'
$ git remote add origin git@github.com:YourRepository/YourRepository.git
$ git push origin master

and heroku:

$ git init
$ git add .
$ git commit -m 'initial blog commit'
$ heroku create
$ git config branch.master.remote heroku
$ git push heroku master

That it is, have fun.