From Wordpress to Jekyll

// development

In my very first blog post, I rambled a little about choosing between a static site generator and a blogging CMS. I said how it doesn’t matter whatever tool I decided to use, and went with Wordpress in the end. Today, I’ve fully migrated my humble little blog to Jekyll.

So why switch?

  1. My overarching principles for designing and building things is speed and simplicity. It affects my choice of tools as well.
  2. Worrying about outdated Wordpress plugins is inane.
  3. Having a database for a simple blog is overkill. Besides, storing blog posts in a database may not be such a good idea.
  4. As a web developer, I live in a text editor and the command line.
  5. I ♥ Sublime Text.
  6. I tried to make my life easier by using TinyMCE (yet another plugin) and custom styles to append classes. I quickly realized that it made no sense.
  7. Markdown is fast.
  8. I got up and running with Jekyll in 10 seconds. Jekyll new site, Jekyll serve. No more messing with Vagrant! (I still use it for other projects though)
  9. Site deployment is so much simpler.
  10. Sick and tired of jumping through hoops just to include files. wp_register_script(), wp_enqueue_script(), maybe try a plug-WHAT?

I had a little bit of anxiety when I thought about wiping my Wordpress installation off the server. So glad I did. Writing is fun again; I’m almost done with my next post.

Of course, not everything is nice and rosy with the switch. I was absolutely spoilt by Wordpress and Yoast for Taxonomy and SEO management. If you’re thinking of switching over to a static blog as well, consider these resources for a smoother transition: