Binnur in Projects 3 minutes

Yay! Moved to GitHub Pages

Welcome to my new site! This is a behind the scenes look at my move off of WordPress. There are two significant aspects to this move:

  1. I am dusting off my blog with the goal to write more
  2. After years of using WordPress, change is good, really good!!

So, why GitHub, and why now?

“There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.” Alan Cohen

I have been enjoying my personal break and bringing back some of my old habits, which I miss… As I reflected on blogging, I realized I had a love/hate relationship with my old blog. I enjoyed verbalizing my thoughts, but it also felt too heavy and time consuming. Part of it was how I approached my writing, more formal and deep, and part of it was the time it took to manage the blogging platform.

So, with this move, my objective is to:

  1. Create a light-weight writing experience where I can experiment easily
  2. Simplify the publishing platform and make it fun!

I have used WordPress for a long time, even hosted it myself in the early days. However, as an engineer at heart, I like the simplicity of git, how it handles versioning, and I have been looking for ways to spend more time using it. There is something deeply satisfying about using vim for editing, and git for check-ins.

I did try to experiment with Medium for writing – but, I didn’t find it gave me the creative controls. And, I just couldn’t make it past my rough draft. I am also not a fan of Medium’s subscription model, so that didn’t help.

Summary: My Workflow

Jekyll for Docker made it really easy to get started with Jekyll. That coupled with the simplicity of the Writer Jekyll theme by AdventureThemes made it a breeze to get started with my new blog site. Setting up a GitHub Page is easy – just takes a minute. I spent a few hours moving my old content to the new site, and here we go!

With that, my workflow:

  • Start a new blog post on a local branch
  • Edit/preview on vscode
  • Test on a local server via docker-compose
  • Push branch to github and ping my editor, i.e. hubby :) for a quick read
  • Fix my highlighted issues
  • Once done, PR and merge

I also started a GitHub project to capture blog ideas, site improvements, etc. It is configured for automated workflow, because why not?! As a bonus, this activity got me reinterested in photography, and I have been thinking about how to use Apple’s Photos app in my workflow, as Aperture have been discontinued and I haven’t found a replacement.

In the process of setting up this blog, I decided to turn off comments. Any potential conversations can take place on other social platforms, likely Twitter. And, at least for now, I am happy with GitHub’s Traffic Insights.

I think this pretty much covers it. Till next time!