Alexander Robotics

I enjoy learning about how others work. Their environment, their process, their software. Perhaps I can learn something from their Zen-like setup, or even be inspired.

In my quest to contribute information rather than just consume, consume, consume, I share with you my choice in blogging platforms: Jekyll.

Applications like WordPress and MoveableType use PHP and MySQL to dynamically store and fetch blog posts, handle theming, and maintain comments. These programs have plugins, hundreds of themes, and extensive administration screens.

I don’t need the overhead of these blogging applications. I don’t want to configure my LAMP stack, tune caching policies, administer my contributers. WordPress and MoveableType solve lots of problems I simply don’t have right now.

With Jekyll, I can write this post in whatever text editor (MacVim) using the “mark up” language markdown. Jekyll automatically turns the markdown files into nicely themed, static HTML files. It even generates the atom.xml file for syndication. I simply upload the generated HTML files to my server and — done. Only the LA in the LAMP stack is needed and the reader gets the performance of a what is essentially a fully cached web site.

One caveat: Jekyll does not have a built-in system for comments. I’ve seen other Jekyll-based blogs use Disqus and related third-party comment systems. As of this writing, I’m not sure which comment route I’ll take. But that’s no excuse for you not to email me directly.

The markdown posts, HTML layouts, and CSS for this site are available online on GitHub.