In my previous website my blog posts were simply JSON objects and a simple forEach would loop through and display them somewhat nicely. Stop judging me, we all have to start somewhere!
But formatting posts was impossible and I'd been waiting for some free time so that I could pursue a less hacky solution. Despite programming for a somewhat long time (since I was 12!), I was aware of static site generation only peripherally.
I discovered Jekyll last year through Emil Baehr's Automatic App Landing Page. I found that template the day of Not Evil Sudoku's launch and had only a few hours before I was due to board an international flight. 1 Needless to say, I butchered it as I raced to get something decent running and definitely didn't appreciate how cool Jekyll (and static site generation as a a whole) was.
Originally, this website was meant to be built with Jekyll but since Gatsby uses React, it would let me re-use some of the components from my previous personal website (May 2021) which seemed neat.
Being able to write posts in Markdown {is an} incredible level-up!
- Why did I plan to launch the same day as travelling internationally? Shhh, I'm a busy guy.↩