I did use wordpress for a long time to write this blog, or better not to write this blog. Me not writing had a lot of reasons ranging from "nothing to say" to being too "cumbersome".
I liked it a lot more to tinker with the design and fail miserably every time.1
From now on, this web site is build using a static site generator called pelican.
Pelican is essentially a bunch of python scripts, that turns a folder of markdown files into a website using a bunch of templates. The templates in this case are written with the jinja2 templating language.2
That, to me, has a number of advantages:
- I get to write using Markdown in TextMate and preview it in Marked (as you can see above)
- I get to tinker with python code instead of php
- I finally understand the code that is behind my website
- The page is static and very lightweight3, so it can be hosted nearly everywhere
The most striking one is that I managed to understand big parts of the code within a day or so of tinkering with it and the example templates
I do hope that I'll use this blog more often from now on, having removed a lot of the friction that was involved4.
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That is precisely the reason why you see someone else work here as a theme. At least for now. ↩
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I plan to post a more detailed description of my adventures to turn a fine wordpress theme into a usable template and tweek it to my needs. ↩
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The difference between a few MB and and a few KB when I changed over to pelican ↩
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Even if its the analogy of buying an other pencil to write more often ↩