Writing is a very therapeutic exercise for me. The process of writing, especially about technical topics, helps me learn. With this new site, I wanted something that was easy to maintain and allowed me to focus my time on writing. For that reason, I've moved from a custom install Wordpress site to a static blog generated using DocPad and hosted on Github Pages.

As the range of devices in my life has evolved, so has my workflow. I need a writing process that fits my new workflow. That workflow consists heavily of dropbox and markdown. That workflow includes starting a post on my phone with a few bullet points, expanding on those points on my iPad, and ultimately ends with editing and publishing on my laptop.

Note: yes, I know Wordpress supports markdown to some extent. I tried it.

That said, I don't want this to be a 'hate on Wordpress' post. I like Wordpress and, as with all tools, it's the correct answer in certain scenarios. A personal blog with my workflow just wasn't a fit in my mind. I say that after having spent quite a bit of time working on a custom theme for this blog.

Thanks

Erv doesn't know it, but he was a huge help. As with writing, I set out to make this project a learning experience. After a bunch of research, I knew I wanted to use DocPad. I knew I wanted a clean looking and mobile friendly theme. His site is the foundation of my site with a few changes and his blog posts and open source work were incredibly helpful.

I've got a bunch of small things to do over the next few weeks. I want to fix how paging works, get a page up to highlight the projects I'm working on, and generally make parts of the site a little more me. I'm also going to slowly migrate my old content. That's an exercise of determining what is worth the effort to migrate and researching what may already be out there to help with the process. Once I can knock out a few of those tasks, I'll get the source up and available to anyone interested.

Closing

I'm not going to specify a writing cadence. When I have something interesting to write about, or a problem I want to talk through, I'll write something. That's going to largely be driven by what is going on at work, what side projects I'm working on, and what's happening with the family.

But, I will be writing more and I am very much looking forward to that.