See also
Blogg update¶
The blog has changed. This seemed to be necessary.
The previous version was running on Octopress. The version before that on a hosted Wordpress installation. I probably still have the script for converting the Wordpress data into markdown files. Somewhere.
The step of moving the content into Markdown certainly was the right decision. Stepping out of that silo was one of the best things I have done. That gave me at least control over my content back. Markdown itself is quite useful, I think. Wordpress on the other side always had some security problems and the whole dynamic webpage setup with PHP was quite easy to attack actually. So constant updates where necessary. For security reasons, you know what I mean.
The biggest mistake I probably made with the blog was to customize it too much. Though I barely touched the layout, there were some adjustments in the background. Those also stopped me from upgrading it further. Everything always broke. Octopress itself seems to have died in development a couple of years ago, Using Octopress also puts you on the side of using Jekyll. I still use the basic Jekyll template for a couple of other sites, but nothing fancy. Jekyll is running on Ruby. And there is the crux. Some machines I have should have been updated a while ago. Jekyll also requires quite a lot of dependencies which also update. Some of those are not available anymore or have changed to much. So basically I could not generate the page on all machines anymore.
And it always left me with a bit of messy and dirty feeling when creating the side.
Within the last couple of years more and more static site generators have grown and are free to use. Some worse, some better.
From my work of field I learned about Sphinx for document generation. It’s main purpose is to create documentation and other documents. HTML output is also available. The whole setup is based on Python (which I am not familiar with, but who cares).
The backend also switches from Markdown to restructuredText. If plain text files are the easiest way way of writing, markdown is the next more complex. RestructuredText takes it to the next level and from there is is just a small step into full Latex. But I hope I will not go there.
text -> markdown -> restructuredText -> LateX?
[x]
(the x marks the spot)
So as you an see at the bottom right this is now generated with Sphinx instead of Octopress.
Basically all old entries are missing so far, but following this mantra, I first got the publishing process in place and will now start to migrate previous entries into restructuredText. sigh.
Oh, I am grateful to have found this site to help me with the conversion and giving me a better understanding of Sphinx.