Switching to Jekyll

I’ve been on Blogger since 2008. It is very easy to use. Since 2008, nothing has really changed about it, save for an exciting -slight- editor UI change a few months ago. That’s good, and bad. Good because it stays simple to write a post and be done. Bad because it is stuck in 2008. Dynamic views are just strange, which means that you have to hack together a theme using their weird xml-ish language.

Really, I have no big problems with Blogger. It was just a bunch of small problems I would have every time I wanted to change anything. So after a few years of looking around at other options, I finally fell on GitHub Pages with Jekyll. Would I recommend this setup for the average person? Nope. Where Blogger is easy, Jekyll takes setting up, configuration and programming your own layouts, etc. Writing is also not much easier. In Blogger click new post, write it, click publish. Bam! Done. With Jekyll and GHP you have to make a branch, actually write your post, commit the branch, merge the branch. So then why did I switch? The code and the flexibility. The code is much easier to write an understand. This means that someone can make exactly the blog / site they want. Basically the coding is easier, but the process is more complicated.

Maybe I won’t feel that way after a few months using it.