This year I finally got around to start writing about some of my technical projects and programming related tasks. And starting out fresh the quickest way was to use some ready-to-go blogging framework. The choices for this are actually pretty amazing…ranging from microblogging services like Posterous and Tumblr to full fledged blogging frameworks like Wordpress and Blogger. Of those services Tumblr seemed like an especially good fit for my needs.
Why Tumblr
- Very quick to get something going
- You can use custom CSS elements
- Source code formatting was possible using pygments
- And very important: It allows you to use your own domain so when moving away from Tumblr you can keep the same URL for your blog
Despite all the merits such an easy to-go solution offers, I have to admit I always felt a little embarrassed as a programmer to use the same tool my grandma probably would (and could). This might have been bearable … but the thing that kind of tipped me over the edge was the constant annoyance with the html content that I would end up with Tumblr. Yes, it is possible to use custom html or even a mixture of html and markdown, but unfortunately the html that you put into Tumblr is not the html that will eventually end up in your blog. That was very unfortunate since I initially tried to use pandoc formated source-code fragments. In Tumblr that would not work. Even though I found a practical solution using pygments, not having full control over the output eventually became a no-go for me (ever tried to render graphs using javascript in Tumblr?).
So it was clear: I needed a solution for my requirements:
- full control over the generated content
- including the usage of javascript and various javascript libraries
- easy to deploy
- not suitable for my grandma (well, what I mean is: a programmer tool)
But then again the variety of approaches that all might be quite viable for a blog make it hard to settle on one technology. So over the course of several month I have been toying with dynamically generated sites using Rails or Express (an extremely pleasant web framework based on nodejs), and the static generators jekyll and Jasper Van der Jeugt’s wonderful Hakyll framework. Since I didn’t really have a need to generate any content dynamically and also had no data I’d put into a database the more lightweight approach of the later two was fully sufficient.
Why Hakyll
- minimalistic configuration
- quick test-fix-test cycle
- power of a real programming language to extend it
- definitely a programmer tool!
Hakyll has a special appeal to me since it is kept pretty minimal and it is written in my favorite programming language. It will give you all you need with very little configuration but also enables you to become arbitrarily sophisticated by writing your own custom pieces of functionality. Just the right mixture of power and ease! So for now I’m really happy with this solution. I have set up an easy deployment strategy, I’m in full charge of my nginx web server, all javascript libraries work without an issue and I know I can always change things around if the need arises.
Practical Blogging with Hakyll
The actual usage of this infrastructure is a real joy: Hakyll comes with a small built in webserver that not only let’s you preview your result quickly but also dynamically regenerates the static content when you change any of the sources!
create post in vim – preview in browser – edit post in vim – refresh browser – edit css in vim – refresh browser – …
Much better then any preview mechanism where that requires you to edit your sources in a web form! And if you run into any difficulties, the guy behind it is very helpful and there is a google group where questions get answered.
Since deployment is now a task that has to be addressed individually, it was easy to set up a git-driven process that will publish the generated static content to my webserver. One quick git push coldflake now takes care that everything is safely sent to my linode server where a post-receive hook takes care of publishing the updated material. Having everything running like this makes blogging a joy again: I use the tools I like and don’t have to fight the system anymore!
The source-code for this blog can be found here.