diff --git a/content/blog/2019-11-05-moving-to-pelican.rst b/content/blog/2019-11-05-moving-to-pelican.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..183af4d --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2019-11-05-moving-to-pelican.rst @@ -0,0 +1,62 @@ +Moving to Pelican +################# + +:date: 2019-11-05T07:05Z +:status: published + +I spent the last few days with moving this site from Jekyll to Pelican. + +Story time! +=========== + +It wasn’t just a plain conversion, though. I also added a lot of my old stories, previously +published on Medium (i will delete that account within a few days, so it doesn’t worth linking.) +These stories are published with their original date (i wrote most of theme long before Medium +existed). + +Why? +==== + +I left GitHub Pages for about a year or so now to host my site for myself. (Remember when i `said +goodbye to DigitalOcean +<{filename}../blog/2015-04-25-good-bye-digital-ocean-hello-again-github.rst>`_? Well, it seems +this goodbye was not forever…) My reasons were mainly about privacy, and the urge to do it +myself; i probably won’t overcome this latter one, like, ever. I want to make my hands dirty with +stuff like this. I also believe in the web as the web, not as a centralised… thing. + +Another reason was that i want to host this site not only on HTTP, but also on `DAT +`_ (there’s also a `hash link `_) and IPFS. It’s not impossible with +Jekyll, it’s just easier for me because of Python. + +And thus, we arrive to my final reason. Pelican may not have as many users as Jekyll does, but +it’s written in Python. It’s a big plus for me as i work with Python every day. It’s easy for me +to hack on the engine itself if i have to (and i had to several times during the migration). + +Where did the comments go? +========================== + +My site is a static site. It means there’s no dynamic web engine behind it (it wouldn’n actually +work on DAT/IPFS, would it?) It is so for a long while now. As such, i used Disqus for comments +but, again for privacy reasons, i have removed it completely. Also, i didn’t have comments +anyway. + +What happened with the looks? +============================= + +I didn’t convert my previous theme to Pelican format. I might, in the future, as i’m not +completely happy with the new layout. I like the new fonts, though, so maybe it will be a healthy +merger of the two. The reason for not doing it instantly is because the old site relied heavily +on external JavaScript and CSS files (like Bootstrap) which doesn’t work well with Dat and IPFS +(yes, most Dat browsers are capable of opening them from HTTP, but then what’s the point of the +whole conversion?) Now anyone can browse my site without an internet connection, and enjoy it in +its full glory. + +What is left? +============= + +I still want to do a lot of CSS tweaks, maybe converting the whole CSS part to SCSS/SASS (i +suspect the built-in theme of Pelican was written in SASS, i just need to find the source). +Nothing big, just to clean up the code. + +I also want to make sure my site renders well with screen readers. I don’t have much content, but +i want it to make accessible for everyone. So keep an eye on the site, it might change soon!