Fifteen years ago today, I published my first blog post and I wanted to mark the occasion with - you guessed it! - a blog post. I didn't really have a strong sense of what I wanted to say but, anniversaries being a chance to reminisce, I found myself revisiting what I've written over the years.
Pagination in Eleventy is bit strange. Out of the box, Eleventy comes with support for something the developers call "pagination", but it might not be the sort of pagination you're used to.
As you probably already know, Eleventy is a static site generator. It generates output HTML files from input template files. In the simplest case, one HTML file is generated for each (non-layout) input template.
After some consideration I've decided to remove the articles from my "Posts" feed and rename it to "Notes". It now contains just my notes and photos (and videos if I ever start posting those). As before, my articles are available in my "Blog" feed.
Initially, my reason for mixing articles, notes and photos into one "posts" feed was that I suspected at least some of my readers would want a feed just for "original content", and the "posts" feed provided that. I still think this is true, but some other insights have led me to reconsider the approach.
As mentioned previously, I recently converted my website over to Eleventy. I'm an IndieWeb participant and, moreover, my website is fairly complex so I ended up writing (or, in some cases, pilfering) a fair amount of code to make it all work together in an acceptable manner. I thought I would document the process via a series of blog posts in case anyone else finds it of value.
After roughly five years, I've finally decided to switch my blog over from Pelican to Eleventy. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't at least partially swayed by the fact that all the cool kids seemed to be doing it but, with that in mind, I do have some (hopefully) legitimate reasons for making the switch.
If you're a programmer of a certain age, you've either read or know about Design Patterns, a book on software architecture popular in the 90s and early 2000's. The book was sort of like a repository of TV tropes for the Object Oriented Programming (OOP) world in that it provided a convenient vocabulary for describing what were usually eminently recognizable software engineering techniques that nonetheless often lacked punchy, easy to remember names.
Bookmark of https://css-tricks.com/considerations-for-using-markdown-writing-apps-on-static-sites/
CSS-Tricks
Considerations for Using Markdown Writing Apps on Static Sites | CSS-Tricks
If you run or have recently switched to a static site generator, you might find yourself writing a lot of Markdown. And the more you write it, the more you
Thinking of trying eleventy. But I've put some much effort into my pelican setup. Hrm.
Bookmark of https://hacdias.com/articles/2020/01/dynamic-static/
Jan 2, 2020, 6:40 PM -05:00Build a Dynamic Website… or Not?
After digressing a bit about building a Micropub endpoint for my website, I’ve been thinking about the next steps: if I should keep Hugo or move to some other system.
Bookmark of https://jlelse.blog/dev/miniflux-blogroll/
Jul 9, 2020, 9:00 AM -04:00How my blogroll gets generated (now completely automatic!)
Yesterday I teased a new post about how I automated my blogroll generation by writing a Go script and using the Miniflux API. Here it is.Up until yesterday, I always updated my blogroll manually. I wrote about that process here. It was a bit of automation but not completely automated. I fixed that and now do what Robert van Bregt suggested or what Jan Boddez does with his WordPress plugin.To generate my site I use a self-hosted instance of Drone CI (I already wrote about that a few times) wit...
Reply to https://twitter.com/jackyalcine/status/1297669737896239104?s=20
My personal website is https://desmondrivet.com I have a blog on it and a kind of microblog as well. It's not wildly beautiful. I write about whatever strikes my fancy, so I definitely wouldn't call it "cohesive". But it's there and I use it and it's mine.
(looking for work) jacky! at the tty on Twitter
“Do you have a blog? 🥰 personal website where you write? 🥰 your own lil' corner of the Web? 🥰 lemme see!”
Bookmark of http://interconnected.org/home/2020/07/29/improving_rss
Interconnected, a blog by Matt Webb
How would I improve RSS? Three ideas
Posted on Wednesday 29 Jul 2020. 1,702 words, 7 links. By Matt Webb.
Bookmark of http://tttthis.com/blog/if-i-could-bring-one-thing-back-to-the-internet-it-would-be-blogs
Datenstrom Yellow
If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs
Nowadays especially it's nice to have things to read. New things, things from various sources and various voices, various minds talking about their t…
Reply to https://twitter.com/ASpittel/status/1260612610686361600
I don't know if I'd call it my favourite, but I use @getpelican, @NetlifyCMS and @CircleCI. Mostly because I'm semi-familiar with Python and Jinja2, CircleCI was faster than TravisCI, and Netlify is just easy.
Ali Spittel 🐞 on Twitter
“What's your favorite tech stack for building a blog site right now and why?”
Bookmark of https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/02/24/a-text-renaissance/
Venkatesh RaoA Text Renaissance
There is a renaissance underway in online text as a medium. The Four Horsemen of this emerging Textopia are: Roam, a hypertext publishing platform best understood as a medium for composing conspiracy theories and extended universes.Substack, a careful and thorough ground-up neoclassical reconstruction of the age-old email newsletter.Static websites, built out of frameworks like Jekyll or Gatsby (full disclosure: a consulting client).And finally, Threaded Twitter, a user-pioneered hack-tur...
I wonder about combining static site generators and photo galleries. I know it's a thing, and yet it feels a bit off, especially when you have 10GB of photos.
I attended my first IndieWebCamp session last week, on the subject of "gardens and streams", otherwise known as wikis and blogs. Given the current global situation, the entire thing was remote; I participated via Zoom. It was fun! I'm glad I got to meet everyone.
Wikis, and how they differ from blogs, is a topic that interests me. You may not know it, but my domain sports a wiki, powered by MoinMoin. I mostly use it to store technical notes and recipes.
Reply to https://twitter.com/jevakallio/status/1254823758784856065?s=20
I maintain website/blog at https://desmondrivet.com It's a statically generated site using @getpelican, hosted on @NetlifyCMS. Updated semi-regularly and cross-posted to Twitter.
Jani Eväkallio on Twitter
“HI! Do you have a self-hosted personal website/blog? If yes drop a link in replies! 🙏 I'm also interested what are your main problems in hosting your own website? Effort? Cost? Tech? Getting engagement?”
Jan-Lukas Else recently asked the Hacker News community why most of them don't have blogs, and published his thoughts on their answers to his own blog. The conversation was interesting and got me thinking about my own motivations for maintaining this site.
The first thing that stands out for me in the responses is the number of people who said that they quit blogging because they didn't have any readers. It was more than I expected. I don't think I fully realized how important readership was to some people in the technical community, probably because I think can safely say that it's not of great importance to me.
Apr 26, 2020, 1:32 PM -04:00A short post mortem, video and note links, and challenge from The Garden and the Stream IndieWebCamp Pop-up session
Thank you everyone! For those who attended yesterday’s The Garden and the Stream IndieWebCamp session, thank you for participating! I honestly only expected 4 or 5 wiki fans to show up, so I was overwhelmed with the crowd that magically appeared from across multiple countries and timezones. I’ve heard from many–both during the session and privately after–that it was a fantastic and wide-ranging conversation. (I never suspected memory palaces or my favorite 13th century Franciscan tertiary to ...
Reply to https://janboddez.tech/notes/ab8cca73e5
Well, this is quite embarrassing. Thank you for the information! Actually, my blog entries on my feed page did have p-names but I think I accidentally made them part of the e-content, and I suspect that's why they were not showing up. And, yes, my published date was embedded in my h-card for silly reasons that I won't get into. Anyway, I think (hope) I've fixed both issues if you want to try again.
Apr 18, 2020, 10:41 AM -04:00In reply to https://desmondrivet.com/2020/04/04/indieweb-conversation. Hi Desmond, wonderful write-up! (I’ve [sort of] said that before.) One thing, though. I’m playing around with Microsub and Microformats a lot these days, and your articles somehow get parsed as notes, and seem to be missing a date as well, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that is because your post titles are lacking a p-name (on the blog archive only, it’s okay on individual pages) and your dt-published is actually inside yo...
Bookmark of https://jlelse.blog/posts/why-no-blog/
Apr 19, 2020, 3:31 AM -04:00Why HN readers don’t have a blog
Yesterday, I asked the Hacker News community why they don’t have blogs, even though they have the necessary technical skills.Many Hacker News readers and contributors have the technical skills to run their own blog and post their opinions. But instead they prefer to use Twitter or other social networks. Why is this so? Is it the effort?I want to respond to some of the answers in this post:I don’t want an extremely public record of my personal opinions or thoughts today, because I know they’re...
Bookmark of https://boffosocko.com/2020/02/24/exploring-pine-blog/
Feb 24, 2020, 3:39 AM -05:00Exploring Pine.blog
I’d noticed Pine.blog before at a previous IndieWebCamp, but not had time to delve into it very deeply. Seeing some of what Brian Schrader has been working on while following IndieWebCamp Austin remotely this weekend has reminded about the project. As a result, I’ve been spending some time tonight to check out some of the functionality that it’s offering. In part, I’m curious how similar, or not, it is to what Micro.blog is offering specifically with respect to the idea of IndieWeb as a Servi...
Reply to https://twitter.com/cameronmoll/status/1215660421878898688?s=19
Aww, no love for @getpelican? I guess it's really only a thing if you already like Python :) It's my blog engine of choice these days though I'm considering switching to @gatsbyjs.
Cameron Moll on Twitter
“What's everyone using for blogging these days? I'm particularly interested in solutions beyond WP and (gasp) commenting.”
Blogging and personal websites and email are considered old school and I just want to cry.