Here we are in another new year with not enough blogging going on, and I am somewhat dismayed to find that the platform that this blog is based on (Jekyll) is now apparently in trouble. The primary developer and maintainer passed away and people are now wondering how active the ecosystem will remain going forward.
I did some quick research to find out that in the bubbling, boiling churn that is web development technology, some interesting new players have emerged, one called next.js in particular. It is interesting in that it is based on Javascript, which seems to be the programming language for the web these days. But, enough about the details for now. The focus of this post is to capture some basic requirements for a new blog implementation
Requirements
- Simplicity: One should not have to know a dozen or more tools and framworks in a “stack” to deploy the blog.
- Standalone: The blog should be self-contained and not rely on any third-party (dynamic) services.
- Static: The blog content should be completely derived from the contents of it’s git repo (with the possible exception of comments).
- Understandable: It should be clear how the site is finally rendered.
- GitHub hosting: Let GitHub handle backup, availability, monitoring, etc.
- Markdown formatting: It’s hard enough to write in the first place without having to worry about some peculiar markup system.
- Simple management of code snippets and graphics: This blog is primarily a place to store my technology-based ramblings.
- Commenting: The ability to allow readers to respond would make the blog more dynamic and indicate whether the contents were proving to be of any value to anyone.
- Workflow: Where possible, follow the Jamstack workflow for development and deployment.