I've managed to hack together this blog using Chris Penner's alternative to Hakyll, SitePipe, as well as using a CSS framework I've wanted to try out, Bulma, and host it on github pages. My plan is to:
- Move over to some other hosting platform to do my own infra (either Digital Ocean or Linode w/ some kind of SSL reverse proxy.)
- Tidy up a little bit of the layout around the site.
- Write some content!
I had written a post over at Medium and while I liked the overall editing experience, I knew I'd eventually find some things lacking e.g. Mathjax integration and the like, of which I was able to sort of hack into my previous tumblr thanks to having access to the HTML of my blog, and is another thing I'll need to add here.
When I was originally looking to make my own blog my ideal layout consisted of Markdown being dumped as HTML which would be sent over some kind of ajax request to fill in an SPA. That still may happen, but at the moment this workflow seems fine, and I'm hoping I can fulfill a personal quota of 250 words per week, but we'll see how that goes.
Also, there's something to say about how generic (and sometimes even bland) some publishing sites make the blog-to-blog experience. Yes, it is just text and media, but even a little bit of a personal touch goes a long way, I think. I worry that, especially in the realm of tech articles, people will feel the 'overal sleek' experience of something like Medium will help carry the weight of their voices beyond the actual rigor of their articles.