After battling with WordPress for years I finally decided to try Jekyll. Like others who’ve made the switch, I grew tired of the poor performance, overly-complicated publishing system and constant need for management of WordPress. I found myself spending more time fiddling than writing.
When the JohnnyA WordPress Hack hit Media Temple a little over a year ago, I tried to do some damage control and repair my blog. I thought I had wiped out the hack, but over the next few months it — or something like it — would continually reappear. Eventually, I realized that I had stopped writing altogether because I was tired of dealing with it. This blog has languished since then.
With the new year approaching I figured I’d start afresh with a new blogging platform. After looking at a few alternatives, I decided on Jekyll. Jekyll bills itself as “a simple, blog aware, static site generator” and it eliminates some of my major pain points with WordPress right out of the box:
- The generated site is just a bunch of static HTML files so it’s fast and secure.
- Jekyll doesn’t need to be constantly updated with security patches since it’s not actually running code in production.
- There’s no “content management” or “publishing system” to get in the way. Everything is stored as simple, editable text files.
Additionally, I had a few requirements of my own that I wanted to meet with the migration to Jekyll:
- Use Vim (or any standard text editor) to write posts.
- Use a Git-based workflow for managing posts and updating the blog.
- Host it on Heroku (for free).
- Use Compass and SASS for layout.
- Be able to use syntax highlighting in posts (without javascript).
- Be able to easily write from anywhere.
Each of these items is a direct result of some pain point I experienced with WordPress. My goal was not just to move off of WordPress, but to really create a better work flow that would reduce friction and in turn encourage me to write more.
I’m still polishing some rough edges, but so far I like my setup. I’m planning some follow up posts that go into more specifics, but for now I’m just enjoying being off of WordPress.