Posts from September 14, 2012

Octopress is great

• Uses Google to provide site search
• Archives builtin
• Tag support
• Draft posts
• Local preview
• Markdown markup
• Google+, Disqus, Google Analytics support
• Incremental deployment
• Deployment to Amazon S3
• Fast as lightning

Wish I'd bitten the bullet earlier.

This is my first post in Octopress.

The text uses Markdown which is marvellous.

My favourite blogging platforms are:

• Octopress
• Habari
• Drupal
• WordPress

The BBC is a popular Web site.

End of message.

Loose thoughts on the plan of attack for the blog migration:

1. Install Octopress locally
2. Configure S3 and install a dummy Web site.
3. Use's3cmd' to upload test site to Amazon S3
4. Test incremental uploads. This is a firm requirement.
5. Full database backup of existing Drupal blog
6. Take backup of Drupal installation (additional modules, scripts).
7. Install vanilla Drupal 7 locally.
8. Install copy of the existing Dupal blog in local version (overwrite database ?).
9. Use the Drupal to Octopress migration script. This extracts nodes from the database and creates Markdown files for each post, This script is probably for Drupal 6 so some tweaks (major rewrite) may be needed for bleeding edge Drupal 7. URL aliasing is supposedly supported.
10. Test the various elements in the checklist. Disqus comments need the correct domain name so will have to come last.
11. Configure a redirect from 'nbrightside.com' to the Amazon URL. I can see trouble and lots of Googl'ing here.
12. Place source code (Markdown posts) into GitHub repository.
13. Put kettle on.

I am a veteran of blog migrations with the scars to prove it. Here is a handy cut out and keep checklist of the important things I normally forget:

• Permalink structure. Try to preserve the existing permalink structure to save hours of pain. This is particularly important when using Disqus (although there is a URL migration utility for Disqus).
• Typically, I like to have 'Archives', 'About' and a 'Contact' page.
• Tag support including a 'Tags' page.
• Images. I have learned to upload all photos and screenshots to PicasaWeb and intentionally de-couple images from the blog platform.
• Sitemap support. Helps search engines index the site.
• RSS/Atom support . Previously I have always used Feedburner (although I may follow Google's example and sever this dependency) and simply use the native feed. Less is more.
• Comments. Static site generators are slightly limited here (compared with proper blogging platforms) so I guess I will continue to use Disqus. Mind you, for the number of comments versus spam, I may also dispense with comments and invite people to use Google+ or identi.ca.
• Themes. It would be desirable to be able to change themes to avoid having the same look and feel and every other Octopress blog.

Please feel free to add your own tips in the comments.

My Web hosting package (provided by Bluehost) expires in October. As this blog is essentially dead (the last post was a one-liner 8 months ago), the sensible and logical thing to do would be to kill the blog and save £5 a month.

Originally I purchased the domain name 'nbrightside.com' and the Web hosting for a couple of reasons:

• I wanted to use self hosted WordPress without some of the restrictions imposed by WordPress.com
• I wanted to play with some of the packaged applications offered by Bluehost.
• I wanted access to a Linux environment, mainly to build, install, experiment with various open source software tools and packages which needed a LAMP stack.

It's really questionable whether I need to maintain this Web presence but, on balance, I'd like to keep the site alive for a little longer.

WordPress, Drupal, Habari et al are all fantastic blogging platforms but rather overkill for this simple, single user blog. For a while, I have been fascinated and trying to resist the temptation of the simplicity and power of static Web site generators like Jekyll and Hyde.

Last year, I even ported the complete contents of this Drupal 7 blog to a locally installed version of Hyde and laboriously fixed up lots of hyperlinks just so the Markdown looked neater.

The completely logical and sensible decision would be to simply resurrect this Hyde environment, re-sync the last couple of one liner blog posts, configure a automatic redirect and use rsync to upload this site to some alternative, cheaper (or free) Web hosting.

So, I have decided to use Octopress and Amazon S3 to host this humble, annually updated blog in the future. I may be able to reuse some of the Hyde content with judicious use of sed to convert the meta data in the header sections or I may just start afresh.

No - I am not mad.