After using Wordpress for a while, I tried to look for something simpler, something with much less overhead for my site. As I am in the middle of learning programming in Ruby, when I found Jekyll, I was very much into giving it a try. It also means that this post that you are reading right now is nothing more than a static HTML page, generated by a simple jekyll build command.

So far I love it.

Everybody has their own wish list. For my search I had a few very simple things to consider:

1. What purpose should a new framework serve for my website?
   Though the list might grow, but currently here it is:
   • A simple blog where I can share thought every once in a while about anything (mainly topic around programming, running, photography, travel sprinkled with some random thoughts…)
   • Showcasing a photography portfolio

   Not a huge list by any means…

2. How to manage content? In my case currently I am in full control of content, hosting and anything else that comes between you seeing this page in your browser and the thoughts in my head. I don’t have an army of editors and other site contributors whose access to the site would have to be managed and any changes I will make, I will make it locally on my computer (development and test environment if you wish…) and upload to the server only after passing all evaluations. For this reason a solution that requires some technical or even programming know-how is perfectly fine.

3. Dynamic vs Static content My content is static. I hope it will change in the future, but for now a few static pages are perfectly OK.

4. Users Since currently I am the only one need access updating the site, there is no need to manage user database

5. How complicated will it be to learn/work with? I am already picking up Ruby and diving deeper and deeper into web development, so I feel comfortable with what Jekyll had to offer.

6. General page load To be as fast as possible. I think we can all agree that nowadays nobody has the patience to wait for websites to load… For this one key detail that is important is the number of items need to be processed to generate the content let it be
   • any kind of magic on the server side
     AND / OR
   • actions your browser need to take.
7. Site design simplicity/complexity
   I wanted to switch to a very simplistic design, so I will not need complex templates/themes that somebody developed with the intention to fit a wide variety of needs and therefore complex and covers a more features than I will really need in the foreseeable future. I am not saying all wordpress themes are evil. They are all good for the purpose they were built: serving needs of a larger audience. For now, I wanted to focus on loading my content as fast as possible and present it in a minimalist design.

To be continued…