Jimdo and jekyll
Feb 20, 2013 • Ole Michaelis
Ohh boy! Such a long time passed since the last post. I just wonna give all of you a few updates.
TL;DR
I’m now working for Jimdo.
This blog now runs with jekyll and github pages.
Please change your reader to http://feeds.feedburner.com/Codestars.
I’m a Jimdo’er
If you follow me on twitter you might noticed that I recently changed my employer! I now work for Jimdo, again in Hamburg. If you wonder what Jimdo is or does?! - I always describe Jimdo like this:
We make your mama’ creating websites, unless she isn’t already a webdeveloper
I’m at the infrastructure team at the moment, so doing lots of devops stuff there. You wonna know why I switched? Just meet me in person the next meetup or conference!
A complete new blog
As you might notice, this blog completely changed! I started with this blog back in 2009 on my own vServer at a very crappy hoster (1Blu - sorry, but no recommendation here). I don’t want to administrate all the stuff which comes along with having your own server. Like doing system updates, manage wordpress and plugins. Plus having such a crappy coded blog-engine like wordpress. I don’t wonna touch any wordpress code, so no chance for me to make changes to the blog-engine.
I discovered jekyll, octopress and stuff one or two years ago and together with github:pages this looks very promising to me. So I want to switch since… ever. But didn’t have the time guts to really do it! Last weekend I want to write a new blogpost, so I logged into my wordpress and started … with installing updates, as always. At this point I decided to finally make the switch-over! Therefore I defined what to do:
- take care of the comments
- split-up domains from vServer
- export and transform posts
- setup jekyll and github pages
Let’s check step by step
take care of the comments
This was an easy pick for me, b/c I already switched to disqus a few month ago in preparation for this switch. Just install the disqus wordpress plugin and transfer you comments. This is a no-brainer srsly!
split-up domains from vServer
Ohh man! Not that no-brainer as I hoped it will be. As I mentioned my old hoster was really crappy and one goal of the move was to get rid of the contract. After I met Anthony Eden the man behind DNSimple at the TakeOff Conference in Lille( and he pooped me). I obviously had to switch my domains to them. And man, I really love this service. I love everything-as-a-service in general and they are a really perfect match for this kind of things!
export and transform posts
The ease of this task really depends on your existing post and the fancyness in there. I just followed this guy http://weedygarden.net/2012/12/hello-jekyll/
I had a couple of embedded youtube videos and other iframes - and they all break. But with some sed/awk and search and replace I fixed most of them. But you will definitely find some broken posts in the archive.
setup jekyll and github pages
I suggest any wrapper around jekyll like jekyll bootstrap or octopress unless you really want to build up everything from scratch on your own.
So yeah - here it is! My fresh, new, shiny blog crafted with jekyll bootstrap and github pages. It’s now responsive, fast, supercool and nerdy. Plus I think this will encourage me to blog more in 2013!
Oh and if you are following my blog on your reader: Please change your reader to http://feeds.feedburner.com/Codestars.