new blog! easier editing! foxes!

I've had a blog for a while. The oldest posts that I've migrated here date back to 2022, but I've had one in some form or another since 2017, and in that entire time I never really found a solution for running it I actually liked. I've always had difficulty with blogging solutions due to balancing two different needs: my needs as a developer, and my needs as a writer.

As a developer, I want to be able to dig into the templates, I want to be able to write my own HTML and CSS, and I want to make my site fully my own weird thing, organised by my own rules, and not constrained by any pre-existing framework, widget layout system, pre-set content structure, or anything else I couldn't bend to my will to create something uniquely nico.

As a writer, I want it to be as easy as possible to author for my blog, I want to be able to write from my phone if an idea strikes me while I'm in bed, I want to be able to have a post show up with one click, and I don't want to have to worry about remembering the damn markdown syntax for a link.

An SSG like hugo fits my needs as a developer, but falls down for me as a writer - while I can (mostly) dictate my own content model and (mostly) do my own templates, writing is an experience that kinda sucks., and then deploying the site to most of the hosting providers who provide static site hosting that isn't a pain either required running hugo locally (which meant I couldn't edit from anything except my main desktop machine) or committing stuff into git and having github pages do the rendering (which requires having git as part of my writing workflow, which is a pain in the ass as somebody who is not a professional software developer). My custom SSG systems solved some of my problems with the frustrations of working with hugo, but didn't solve the core problem of a writing workflow that, for me, sucks.

A CMS like wordpress fits my needs as a writer, but sucks as a developer: it's a pile of overcomplicated jank, getting to the base HTML is a pain, many features are locked behind weird plugins, the content model is weirdly limiting, and I couldn't do what I wanted with any of the big, popular options.

As of today, this blog is running on Statamic, which hits a really nice balance between those two needs. As a developer, it's incredibly flexible, well documented, and very easy to create custom things with. As a writer, the control panel interface is excellent, and it has all the features I could want. I'm not going to dig into what makes it cool here too much, but it's essentially the system I have always dreamed of having. The approach it takes to modelling content is flexible enough to let me create my kinds of nonsense, the templating is nice, and I can edit from a web control panel from any device with an interface that is genuinely enjoyable.

The one gripe I have with it is deploying a site - it's a Laravel app, with all the weirdness that comes with that, and I failed to get it running on a server myself. Thankfully, my friend Ash was able to get me set up to run it on her server, and help me through the process of setting permissions and things so they worked right. Thanks so much! (it's likely not something you will struggle with if you are a server knower, though)

You'll also notice that I've done a bit of an update of the site's styling. It now has a lot more foxes. You might also notice that every post has an associated thematic fox, which is thanks to Statamic making it easy to add a "fox" field to every post, and me thinking that would be fun!

but yeah, enjoy the new site! It will likely get a few tweaks, but I am fairly certain that, barring any huge issues, I have found the blog I'm actually gonna stick with. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope this helps me actually start writing for it more!

(if you really want to see the old site, for now it is at https://old.itwont.work. But don't expect it to stick around! I migrated everything here anyway.)