I hosted my personal website on IDwebhost, it’s static portfolio website, so I never update it. Last week my passion had come back to blogging, so I was on fire to find a way how to blog.
I wanted a cool theme, then I went to themeforest. First I thought of WordPress theme, and wow, the price for a theme is about $50 on average. I was double thinking at that day, WordPress, I am not familiar with the framework, I might have no time to learn to customize it. So I retreat from blogging via WordPress.
Then I started to find some HTML templates, there are many cool templates in there, very cool. But then I thought again, by using HTML template, I have to build back-end engine, I thought of building it, whether using PHP or Scala. No no no no… I have no time for that. Then I heard that GitHub offers a static HTML hosting so called GitHub Pages. This service was originally launched years ago, but I just know it recently, since I was not actively playing on GitHub.
In GitHub Pages documentation, I found out that GitHub suggests me to use Jekyll, an open source program, written in Ruby by Tom Preston-Werner, GitHub’s co-founder. Jekyll a simple, blog-aware, static site generator for personal, project, or organization sites. So, I tried to install Jekyll. Started by installing Ruby on Windows 8.1. I took hours to have it working on my laptop. I also tried Octopus, a fork of Jekyll that works similiar. I needed more time to have Octopus run on Windows, mostly because of dependency software are not compatible, yikes!
Then I tried to find Jekyll alternatives, I found StaticGen to get information about static site generator, most of them doesn’t have admin panel. I want my blogging activity seamlessly. I was looking for that through Google, Jekyll Admin Panel, Octopus Admin Panel, etc. There was an opensource Jekyll admin panel, but it’s outdated, not working on latest Jekyll.
Finally I introduced to Statamic, I forgot where I firstly hear this tool. I then watched their screencast through Vimeo and Youtube. I was impressed on how structured Statamic is. It looks easy and well documented. But then I thought that it’s run on PHP, it’s NOT static site generator, so I won’t be able to host it on GitHub. But hey, I read it on here and here. They support generating HTML files. Also they have admin panel. I was more impressed. Then I decided to buy a personal license, and downloaded it.
Awesome, the code style was beautiful, easy to understand. I love it.
Once I downloaded it, I installed it on XAMPP. Ouch, it’s not working. It requires PCRE and UTF-8 Support. Oh no, where can I get the compiled PHP binary with that specification? I tried it on Debian Wheezy using apt-get run on Docker. Somehow I failed to manage it, stuck on dependencies. Hours later I tried to install Wamp Server. YES!!! All is good. The required and recommended Statamic prerequisites are fulfilled.
After it works on my local machine, I started to dig the code. I found bugs on the static generator feature. It’s normal, it is only the first release of this feature. Then I tried to fix them. Now it works like a charm, meets all my need.
I want to use non built in theme. Found this cool theme. I registered to the site and started downloading it. Dang!!! it’s wordpress theme, they don’t mention it on the download page. Then I searched another. And got this. It’s Jekyll theme. At least it’s not a wordpress theme. I read the license agreement, that’s okay, it’s free. Then I downloaded it and ported it to Statamic theme and also customize it. I took two days on my spare time to finish it. And Viola!!! My blogging story starts from here. Powered by GitHub, Statamic, and Minimal Mistakes. Look at the footer!