This is my first new post written in markdown for the static version of patrick.wagstrom.net/weblog. The only reason I was running both PHP and MySQL on my server was to host wordpress which became a pain in the ass with all of the upgrades. This eliminates all of those nasty security holes and allows me to focus a little bit more on just writing. Which is what a weblog is supposed to be.
I’m running Octopress, which is a blogging framework based on Jekyll. The downside to this is that means that it cannot accomodate dynamic elements, therefore all comments need to be farmed off to an external service. Fortunately, I was already using IntenseDebate. With only a very small amount of work I was able to migrate everything over to the new system. Perhaps most substantial is that I had to write a patch to Octopress to support IntenseDebate. I’ve since created a pull request for IntenseDebate support on Github. Hopefully the authors will see fit to pull it in.
So yeah, it’s a little more work now that I don’t have a web interface to do things like manage images and remember my links, but I can write posts from any text editor, which is VERY handy for when I’m stuck in airplanes and too cheap to pay for WiFi.
Overall I’m not certain if this is a good idea. In the past I’ve extolled various reasons why you shouldn’t try to do it yourself. However there is also merit to doing it yourself. Up until this point I’ve been an active Ruby Hater, and it’s becoming clear that I should at least be peripherally aware of what Ruby can do. Although my extensions to this point have not involved hacking Ruby, it might at some point in the future.
So, for now, enjoy the fact that every post is showing up again in your RSS reader and marvel at the beautiful new theme. With no more worries about annoying security faults and a faster response time.