Blog Relaunch
16 May 2016I started a blog on blogspot in 2009, just to have something to put my thoughts on. In the beginning I did not blog regularly with 17 posts from 2009 to 2011 but wrote my most popular post so far when it comes to total visits on using Akka from Java. When starting as an independent developer in 2012 it was clear for me that I wanted to use blogging for my marketing because it's a great way for me: When writing posts I can learn a lot about different topics I am interested in.
As I wanted to have the blog linked to my name I configured blogspot to use blog.florian-hopf.de instead of the old fhopf.blogspot.com. At the same time I introduced some pages about my work, articles I had written and talks I had given. I generated some static files using Nanoc with a very simple bootstrap based theme. Those files were then being delivered using www.florian-hopf.de. To give the impression of a coherent website I added the same template to blogspot so it might have happened that you didn't even notice that two systems were involved.
After starting as an independent developer I also increased my blogging frequency with publishing weekly for several months. This lead to 13 posts in 2012 (I started freelancing in May), 25 posts in 2013 and 29 posts in 2014. As I then started writing my book on Elasticsearch there were nearly no posts in 2015 and 2016 but I am planning to write more regularly soon.
So far the combination of blogger and static website worked for me but it had some drawbacks.
- Though I got Nanoc somehow working I wasn't really convinced it's the best tool for the job.
- The fonts of the template were far too small, especially for mobile devices.
- I always had to keep the templates in sync. When changing something on the website (e.g. a new navigation item) I had to add it to the blogger template as well.
- Finally the most important drawback: I am writing most blog post in text files first and version them using Git. Going through the blogger web interface felt like a totally unnecessary step.
Fortunately finally I found the time to do something against it and you are looking at it right now. This site is completely generated using Jekyll, the template is based on the simple responsive Hyde. Jekyll provides an easy way to migrate your blogger content. The comments are now on Disqus and I hope that all old comments are still accessible. RSS is still delivered using Feeburner that now points to my server. The blog is still running on the old subdomain but all of the content is now delivered using my server.
With the new template I hope my posts can be read more easily, especially on mobile devices. If you notice something weird I would be really happy if you let me know. I hope you will enjoy some of the posts I will be writing in the future.