I've kept a website since at least 2005, and over those years I've devoted considerably more time to tinkering with the tech stack than I have actually writing new content.
By my count, RossChurchley.com and its predecessors have gone through at least fifteen different major iterations across Blogger, WordPress, hand-crafted HTML, Nanoc, Middleman, Hugo, Eleventy, and Jekyll, to say nothing of the countless minor redesigns and feature plugins I spent time on instead of blogging.
This post marks the release of the sixteenth major version of this website, built with Gatsby. I intend to stick with this framework for a while so I can publish all the things I've accumulated in my commonplace book but never got around to posting.
The new stack includes a few features that should hopefully reduce some of the barriers to writing new posts, but the most important change is a shift in the way I think about blogging. Here's what you can expect from the new site:
- More frequent short posts. I've accumulated tons of mildly interesting facts in my commonplace book and will be sharing them regardless of whether I have anything to add.
- More works-in-progress. When I do have an ongoing project on the go, I won't wait until it's finished to share it. Instead I'll try to write a summary post near the start of the project that will be updated along the way.
- Gradual restoration of old posts. I'm not waiting to migrate all my old posts before I start writing new ones — and to keep myself accountable, I won't be restoring any old posts until I've written an equal number of new ones.
- Gradual restoration of old features. Similarly to the above, I haven't yet implemented post tags, search, and so forth. I'll get to these eventually, but I don't want them to stop me from blogging like I have in the past.
I hope you enjoy the new site!