Quest for the One Blog
25 entries. 25,979 words.
2019-08
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Quest For The One Blog, Part 1.
2019-08-11.
Blaugust has inspired me to write a lot more, and to think about my blog, so I thought I would start writing an open-ended series of posts about a very long-term, often-neglected project of mine: Migrating to a new blogging platform. The generic "this is a post about blogging" image.
Over the years, I’ve made a bunch of web sites. I’ve been with a bunch of different web hosts. I currently have four different web sites that I “maintain” (with varying degrees of updates, from none to frequent): A real-name site, a writing site, a music site, and a gaming site.
- Development
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Quest for The One Blog, Part 2.
2019-08-11.
Previously, I mentioned that I planned to investigate the Pico and Grav blogging platforms first, since they are both PHP-based, database-less platforms that operate on Markdown flat files, which sounds like the perfect place to start for my mission goals.
Incidentally this is exactly the kind of post I wouldn't normally put on this blog.
First I’d like to mention that it’s really hard to find alternate blogging platforms. Any sort of Googling will get you information on: WordPress, Blogger, possibly SquareSpace, and maybe a mention about Medium.
- Development
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Quest for The One Blog, Part 3.
2019-08-12.
Last time, I setup Pico and Grav on a Linux server. Now that I have a working installation of both Pico and Grav, it occurs to me: Now what?
I haven’t tested their capabilities extensively, but of the two platforms, I would say that Grav probably has more features and more support. It’s closer to what a WordPress user might expect to see in a blog. It has plugins and themes and an administration panel.
- Development
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Quest for The One Blog, Part 4.
2019-08-13.
Last time, I brainstormed about content archives without accomplishing much. This time, however, I am diving straight into the deep end and trying to create content in Pico and Grav.
Okay, that’s overselling it a little bit.
But I have now tinkered a little bit with Pico and Grav to see what it can do straight out of the box.
I imagine my writing workflow is going to look something like this (as it has, more-or-less, for the past month): Write a blog post in a plain text editor on some other computer, possibly my iPad with an Apple wireless keyboard, which is my favorite keyboard to write on.
- Development
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Quest for The One Blog, Part 5.
2019-08-14.
Last time I looked at Pico and Grav. I was going to look at Kirby CMS this time, but I encountered two things that stopped me before I even downloaded it.
Kirby No-Go First, upon perusing the cookbooks, you have to setup the same kind of one-directory-per-blog-post structure in Kirby that I didn’t like in Grav. Just for the record, contrary to Kirby’s tagline, that is not “adapting to your content,” it is, in fact, “forcing a strict ruleset upon your content.
- Development
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Quest for The One Blog, Part 6.
2019-08-15.
This is a list of Blogging/CMS solutions I’ve looked into so far, which I gleaned from this site. These are just some of the different ways that people (by which I mean programmers) have desperately tried to break free of the WordPress Industrial Complex.
Automad. I didn’t care for the documentation, or lack thereof.
Baun. Installed, see below. Very promising directory structure of content similar to what I had envisioned. Baun is apparently a newer iteration of Pico.
- Development
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Quest for The One Blog, Part 7.
2019-08-27.
I stopped writing about my Quest for The One Blog for a very good reason: I gave up on it. What I want to do is essentially impossible unless I develop the blogging platform from scratch myself (or fork one of the open source projects). It’s within my skillset to do that, but I just don’t have the time or motivation or funds for it. (But hey, if anyone is interested in Kickstarting it, let me know!
- Development
2019-09
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Quest for The One Blog, Part 8.
2019-09-08.
My current thinking is that I should be looking into two distinct blogging platforms. One for the “live” blog, the most recent stuff, where people can theoretically interact and leave comments on a daily basis, and consume an RSS feed.
The second platform would be for the “archives:” Mainly static pages of older posts for reference, without much of any interactivity.
Regardless of how I proceed with the “live” blog, the idea of a “static site generator” for the older archives appeals to me, or one of the Markdown-based platforms I’ve previously mentioned.
- Development
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Hugo – Quest for The One Blog, Part 9.
2019-09-10.
This one’s about Hugo, the static site generator. I’ve seen references to it all over the place during this ongoing research project. (Also Jekyll.) It seems to be popular among programmers, for reasons that should become obvious as I describe it below.
A static site generator is a tool that takes a series of input files, usually plain text files, and turns them into a big directory of HTML, CSS, and Javascript files.
- Development
2021-01
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2021 Begins.
2021-01-01.
I have rebuilt Endgame Viable as a static site, which means massive changes for me, the developer, and some changes for you, the reader.
First, it probably looks completely different.
Second, there are some things that you won’t be able to do on the new site, at least not initially:
Search for posts. Update: The workaround is to type “your search term site:endgameviable.com” into Google. Comment on posts. For comments, I wired up a somewhat janky private Remark42 server.
- Administration
2021-02
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Quest for the One Blog, Part 10.
2021-02-02.
For completeness, I present this brainstorming session about merging two other kinds of content streams in with blog content, an unfinished draft from somewhere during a Lost Time Period of 2020.
- Development
2021-04
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Hosting on Azure - Quest for the One Blog, Part 11.
2021-04-25.
Setting up Hugo, the static site generator, to build my blog with Microsoft Azure.
- Development
2021-08
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Todo List - Quest for the One Blog, Part 12.
2021-08-07.
Mainly so that I can remember this, here’s a list of the outstanding problems with the blog that need to be resolved someday.
- Development
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Status - Quest for the One Blog, Part 13.
2021-08-08.
A quick summary of the current status of the Quest for The One Blog.
- Development
2021-11
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Comment Server - Quest For The One Blog, Part 14.
2021-11-25.
I may have setup a working Remark42 comment server?
- Development
2022-01
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Flipping The AWS Switch - Quest for the One Blog, Part 15.
2022-01-09.
Tonight I’m going to start “flipping the switch” to host the blog entirely in AWS.
- Development
2022-08
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Comment Administration.
2022-08-04.
This brief post serves two purposes.
- Blog
- Administration
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Recent Blog Changes On AWS.
2022-08-07.
I’m already sick of my Blaugust project, so I’m writing something else. This is about Amazon Web Services and Nginx config files, mainstream topics everyone can enjoy.
- Development
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Blog Changes This Month.
2022-08-26.
Blaugust inspired me to make some much-needed technical changes to the blog this month, which I will now try to recall for posterity.
- Development
2022-11
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ActivityPub And Me, Part 1 of ?.
2022-11-18.
I’ve been on a learning rampage on the topic of the fediverse lately, and there’s plenty of material for writing blog posts.
- Development
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ActivityPub And Me, Part 2.
2022-11-28.
There’s a land rush of ActivityPub implementations going on right now, and I’m in it.
- Development
2022-12
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Almost Two Years of Static Blogging.
2022-12-01.
I thought I should evaluate how static blogging has been going after almost two years.
- Development
2023-08
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State of the Site.
2023-08-03.
How my static blog works, summer 2023 edition, with nifty diagrams.
- Development
2023-11
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The Sudden Urge To Rebuild The Site.
2023-11-16.
Brainstorming from back in May about new blog site ideas.
- Development
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Trying Commentbox.
2023-11-21.
Out of nowhere I decided to try a new comment hosting solution, and it was easy.
- Development