Dr. Matt Lee (mattl)

After much hand-ringing on my part, I am somewhat satisfied with my new setup for blogging and publishing on my website. This explains my setup a little.

My previous setup:

• Every page on my website is basically a static file, going back to 1994. I’ve attempted to use WordPress, Movable Type Open Source and many other tools over the years to remedy this, to no avail.
• Homepage is updated every 10 mins from https://mattl.omg.lol via everyone’s favorite CMS, curl.
• I also have a blog at https://blog.mat.tl/ which is a WordPress blog.

My new setup:

• Every page on my website is still a static file, new static files are generated by Eleventy/11ty, older files are left as-is.
• I write blog posts and new pages in Ghost, run a script and Eleventy generates a static copy of my whole site on my computer.
• I use rsync to copy the files to my web server.

My ideal setup:

• What I have now, but the rsync part happens automatically.
• Ghost is easier to install (doesn’t require a command line)
• Something something Markdown in Git.

How I got here

I’ve been thinking about this for some time. Far too long, really. I miss how Movable Type does/did things but sadly the open source version is long since dead and OpenMelody didn’t get the traction it needed.

A few weeks ago I started experimenting with a tool to get posts from WordPress directly into a new Eleventy site. My current setup is based on the Eleventy Starter Pack. I’m using a less modified version for the Libre.fm blog too. Next step? Write about internet history? Sure, why not.

How do I get here?

Get a personal website and some dynamic or static hosting today if you can.

First you’ll need a domain name and I recommend porkbun.com for that.

In terms of static hosting:

• omg.lol can do this for you via the switchboard
• you can host a static website at Neocities (blog.libre.fm is hosted on Neocities)
• or you can host static files on bunny.net (bored.city lives on bunny.net).
• nearlyfreespeech.net is also a very good static host
• I’m sure you could also host this on GitHub or GitLab pages too.

Thoughts? Let me know.