As previously mentioned, I’ve finally moved off of Wordpress and am running my blog as a static site using Hugo hosted on Netlify.
What does this mean for you? Well, hopefully it’s faster with fewer scripts — actually none except for any embeds like Twitter and YouTube. Also zero tracking apart from the ones those embeds may use, though I’ve turned on as much privacy protection for visitors as I can.
The images are better optimised and should be running off of Netlify’s CDN, while larger downloads are on Backblaze. And the site has a different look, of course. For me it will mean never having the hassle of Wordpress upgrades and mySQL attacks again and I’ll have the convenience of writing all the posts in plaintext and having the site version controlled on Github.
There’s a new contact form managed by formspree.io that should be reliable, a simpler about page with a link to new headshots for conferences and publications. I’ll be putting workshop materials I am able to publish up in the teaching section, but that’s one of the areas that still needs updating. You should find the RSS feed works fine, but you will probably get all the posts ever in your feed reader showing as unread.
Despite moving content around, I have tried to keep all the URLs intact via redirects. I went through every single post and tried to fix up any broken text, images and links, but you may find some. Please let me know if so. I’ll try and fix them, but I’ve also noticed how broken the Web has become – so many defunct sites or moved content. It was quite a trip down memory lane and it’s been interesting to see how predictions or my thinking has evolved. The early stuff is pretty embarrassing drivel, now more suited to social media burps.
I also discovered this is the fifth platform I’ve used—I went from handmade HTML to Blosxom to Movable Type to Wordpress and even had some Tumblr and Blogger connections once. I had completely forgotten about Blosxom.
There are still several elements to add, but it’s close enough to go live. You might fine the https isn’t working for a bit whilst I get all the SSL certificates sorted. Also there’s no search right now, but you can find most things via the archive.
Lastly, I’ve retired the name “Playpen” for my blog. It was a name I used for a long time as part of my PhD research into play, but since my newsletter is called Doctor’s Note I thought I’d give the blog the same name.