I just finished converting this site to use Jekyll. So far, I’m using a nearly-unmodified version of the default theme, Minima. That may change in the future, but for now it fits my needs perfectly: it’s readable and simple.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

I had built the old site from scratch using HTML, CSS, and vanilla JS – it was a good exercise (stretching my basic webdev muscles for the first time in a LONG while), but wasn’t going to meet most of my basic needs (post categorization, metadata organization, SEO, etc.) without significant manual overhead. With numerous frameworks that fit those needs out of the box, why reinvent the wheel?

WordPress Sucks

At first I considered going to WordPress, which I have some experience with in the past, but it had always left a bad taste in my mouth – it felt heavy and slow and I was always hearing about new plugin vulnerabilities. Having a WordPress site always felt like having target painted on my back.

Static Site Generators

With that, I looked towards Static Site Generators. There are numerous SSGs to choose from, but I ultimately settled on Jekyll because it seemed like the most simple one out of the box, especially for building a simple site like this one. I’m looking forward to getting more familiar with it, but relieved with the thought that if I don’t want to, I don’t have to!