Something old, something new

If you’re reading this, then you’re probably seeing this on my re-launched blog. In early February 2025, I began the process to migrate my blog away from WordPress and to a different format. One of the things that I’ve been thinking about lately is making sure I put my content in places I fully control. Social media platforms are ephemeral, and what’s popular one day can be quickly abandoned or coopted the next. If something happens to the presentation of the website, that the content is in markdown files means it’s highly portable from one platform to the next.

Don’t get me wrong: WordPress was a fantastic platform. But it’s not in line with my thinking regarding my content. The process of converting the WordPress files to Markdown was a pain, and it’s something that’s still ongoing. But since everything content on this blog is now a markdown file (or YAML or JSON), the generation software I use becomes irrelevant.

Because I’m sure you’ll ask, here’s what’s under the hood of the new site:

The site’s generated by Jekyll 4.1, which while I know is one of the early static-site generators, works perfectly for what I’m trying to accomplish. I know I can use the hip JavaScript- or React-based generators, but that’s way beyond what I need do to for now.
The visual style is accomplished through Tailwind CSS and AlpineJS. For now, I’m using the previous v3 of Tailwind, because the translation layer between Tailwind and Jekyll doesn’t seem to work for Tailwind v4.
The static pages are hosted on Cloudflare Pages. The secret weapon is that if the hosting provider returns a 404 error, a bit of code redirects you to the URL you tried to look up but on the previous blog.
The site is a GitHub repository, and GitHub Actions runs the site creation nightly, as well as whenever a push to the main repository is made. While you can’t access it, you can see the commit ID for that current build of the site.

Speaking of the previous blog, it’s still up at old.edwardjensen.net. I have paid for hosting for a bit longer, so I’ll keep it up and linked until I’ve moved the content from there to here.

There are, at least as of the publishing date of this post, a few known issues that need to be ironed out.

RSS feeds are wonky. For now, edwardjensen.net/feed.xml will work. I’m working on adding multiple feeds based on the type of post.
There still are a few layout-related issues, especially for mobile devices. I’m 85% happy with things, but it’s that last 15% that will make this feel polished.
There isn’t an automatic way to post content automatically to Bluesky or LinkedIn. I might play around with a service like ActivityPub, but that seems to be a big lift.
For me, I would like to make Obsidian, the markdown-based notes app, the CMS for the site. There are some workflows in Obsidian Templater that should make this accomplishable, but that’s a work in progress. Copy-and-paste works just fine for now.

I thought this project would take quite a while to do, but I was able to build the site in about a weekend. OK, that’s all I did for a Saturday and Sunday, but it’s up and ready. I’m seriously excited about the future of this site, and that I’m now able to put my thoughts about content into practice.