BACKLOG

Middleman

I don’t want to go dwell to much on the evolution of my online presence. For nearly two years this site has been built upon the awesomeness that is Jekyll. Over the two years I’ve learned a lot, I’ve also made may mistakes. I do feel in many ways Jekyll with GitHub is nearly a perfect platform for most users. Yet I wanted more and moved the hosting to Heroku. I had the inclination I still wanted more back in November when I started to ‘refactor’ the site design. I think I need to move, and today I am making that change by moving from Jekyll to Middleman.

I can’t point to one issue or desire that prompted the change. The reasons I originally choose Jekyll are no longer compelling1. With all choices have have trade offs. This move allows me to erase inherited technical debt2 while putting thoughtful purpose behind the choice I make while giving me the headroom to grow and explore3.

  1. I no longer use GitHub, let alone gh-pages, so the tight integration between Jekyll and GitHub mute. Conversly I love the fact Middleman-livereload also generates assets. [return]
  2. My code base started as a clone of JekyllBootstrap, while you do go from nothing to something in 3 minutes, the site lacked ‘thoughtful purpose’ on my part. Also, did get tired of Liquid and how Liquid cause Jekyll to produce some nasty looking source code. [return]
  3. I still wholeheartedly endorse Jekyll. It is still a great static generator and a great tool I could see using again. [return]