Like many other developers, I’ve decided to abandon WordPress and use GitHub’s Jekyll as a Service for my blogging platform. Most developers focus on the how when they write their “I’ve switched to Jekyll” post. I’m thankful to all of those developers because their work has made my transition easier. However, I’m going to focus on the why for this post.
Why
In no particular order:
- I use Jekyll/Bootstrap for a number of other projects and using them here helps me get better at them.
- Bootstrap makes me feel like I can do front-end development. :)
- I subscribe to a number of Software as a Services and the monthly bills do add up. This is free.
- I truly hated the WordPress WYSIWYG editor. I spent most of the time in the HTML editor anyway.
- Full control of the look and feel.
- GitHub is constantly improving the platform.
- Zero security worries.
- Blogging in markdown.
- No need to install anything. Now that I’m setup, I can blog directly from the GitHub editor.
- Version control of everything.
How
Just some points on what I used to transition:
- exitwp to get my content out of WordPress.com.
- {wrap}bootstrap is where I found this blog theme.
- Disqus for comments.
- Twitter Widgets for Twitter.
- Too many blog posts and StackOverflow answers to count.
Coda
I’m seriously looking forward to blogging using Jekyll as a Service. And if you weren’t aware, the gentleman above is Mr. Hyde from Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentleman.