LightBlog

In order to reduce the overhead between having an idea and posting it on my blog, I recently switched from WordPress to LightBlog, a lightweight blog engine developed by Guillaume Claret. It works as follows: to create a new post, write it as an HTML file in a posts/ folder, then run make at the root of the blog's directory to regenerate the whole blog as a set of static web pages.

Why so simple? Well, my blog happens to be quite simple. The database essentially consists in date-text pairs, and it is only updated when I post a new entry. WordPress required an SQL database for this and provided me with a big and unsecure (I never managed to get SSL certificates running) web portal to edit content. And I don't want to think about the cumulated time I've spent updating it, each time manually (otherwise I would have had to give away my SSH password on a clear channel). With LightBlog, I don't need to be online to edit a post: I can write it anywhere (say, in the train) and git push it when I'm done.

Let's see what comes out of this move to the other side of the spectrum.