So using a static site engine was more an exercise in getting back to basics. I’ve used Wordpress and other blogging patforms. I’ve used a variety of flat file and database driven CMS’s. I’ve built from the ground up using writing my own structure or using Foundation, Skeleton and Bootstrap. I’m not saying that any of those things are wrong. There’s no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t have the comfort I do moving to a static site engine without having experienced the nuances of other systems. For me, I wanted to write more and I wanted to have fun learning something new while doing it.
Hugo
So, I’m using Hugo. It’s not the most popular static site engine and part of me is happy about that — I kind of like not following the popular crowd. The other engine I considered was Jekyll. But as someone who is learning about static site engines I found Hugo to be more intuitive in making those first steps. Also, Hugo is blazingly fast compar3ed to Jekyll and other SSGs. Jekyll has a dependancy on the Ruby language. Hugo has a dependancy on the Go programming language. Both of these are relatively new areas for me, and to be honest about it, I’m taking a leap of faith in learning more about Go than Ruby.
I’ve chosen the Tranquil Peak theme as a baseline to start this blog. Update: Using PaperMod as of 2021.
A Word on Migrating Data
My previous site that was housing a blog was using Perch. I love the Perch CMS. It’s the perfect mix between having a full blown CMS and being able to to manage only specific pieces of content. You have the flexibility to ‘CMS-ify’ as little or as much content as you like. Their admin control panel is incredibly easy to use and allows for lots of flexibility making the time to train clients nearly non-existent.
Given the small amount of content that needed to move over, it was just as easy for me to open up myPhpAdmin, copy and paste the relevant fields into new markdown files. As this blog grows, I will add additional layers of organization.