--- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/content/Coding/000-blog-reboot.rst	Thu Jan 30 21:45:03 2014 -0600
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+Blog reboot with Blogofile
+##########################
+
+:date: 2011-04-17 14:10
+:tags: Blogging, Blogofile
+:slug: blog-reboot-with-blogofile
+:author: Brian Neal
+
+Welcome to my new blog. I've been meaning to start blogging again for some time, especially since
+the new version of SurfGuitar101.com_ went live almost two months ago. But the idea of dealing with
+WordPress was putting me off. Don't get me wrong, WordPress really is a nice general purpose
+blogging platform, but it didn't really suit me anymore.
+
+I considered creating a new blog in Django_, but I really want to spend all my time and energy on
+improving SurfGuitar101 and not tweaking my blog. I started thinking about doing something
+simpler.
+
+Almost by accident, I discovered Blogofile_ by seeing it mentioned in my Twitter feed. Blogofile is
+a static blog generator written in Python. After playing with it for a while, I decided to use it
+for a blog reboot. It is simple to use, Pythonic, and very configurable. The advantages for me to go
+with a static blog are:
+
+1. No more dealing with WordPress and plugin updates. To be fair, WordPress is very easy to update
+   these days. Plugins are still a pain, and are often needed to display source code.
+2. I can write my blog posts in Markdown_ or reStructuredText_ using my `favorite editor`_ instead
+   of some lame Javascript editor. Formatting source code is dead simple now.
+3. All of my blog content is under version control.
+4. Easier to work offline.
+5. Easier to deploy. Very little (if any) server configuration.
+6. I can use version control with a post-commit hook to deploy the site.
+
+Disadvantages:
+
+1. Not as "dynamic". For my blog, this isn't really a problem. Comments can be handled by a service
+   like Disqus_.
+2. Regenerating the entire site can take time. This is only an issue if you have a huge blog with 
+   years of content. A fresh blog takes a fraction of a second to build, and I don't anticipate 
+   this affecting me for some time, if ever. I suspect Blogofile will be improved to include caching 
+   and smarter rebuilds in the future.
+
+It should be noted that Blogofile seems to require Python 2.6 or later. My production server is
+still running 2.5, and I can't easily change this for a while. This really only means I can't use
+Mercurial with a *changegroup* hook to automatically deploy the site. This should only be a temporary 
+issue; I hope to upgrade the server in the future.
+
+Blogofile comes with some scripts for importing WordPress blogs. Looking over my old posts, some of
+them make me cringe. I think I'll save importing them for a rainy day.
+
+The bottom line is, this style of blogging suits me as a programmer. I get to use all the same
+tools I use to write code: a good text editor, the same markup I use for documentation, and version
+control. Deployment is a snap, and I don't have a database or complicated server setup to maintain.
+Hopefully this means I will blog more.
+
+Finally, I'd like to give a shout-out to my friend `Trevor Oke`_ who just switched to a static blog
+for many of the same reasons.
+
+
+.. _SurfGuitar101.com: http://surfguitar101.com
+.. _Django: http://djangoproject.com
+.. _Blogofile: http://blogofile.com
+.. _Markdown: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
+.. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
+.. _favorite editor: http://www.vim.org
+.. _Disqus: http://disqus.com/
+.. _Trevor Oke: http://trevoroke.com/2011/04/12/converting-to-jekyll.html