I have not blogged very much the last couple of years, but I am feeling the itch again. I love how blogging makes you more closely research and examine your thoughts and your code. I have missed it. I also miss the positive feedback and ego-reinforcement of blog comments and Google Analytics stats. So for 2013 I am trying to get back on the horse.

It was 4 years ago that I first decided to blog about web design and development on my freelance web design site, Chili Pepper Design. I read some high praise for the Textpattern PHP content management system, and installed it. It worked well, but had started to feel dated of late. And besides, none of the cool kids on Hacker News ever talk about Textpattern any more. ;)

So what are the cool kids talking about now? What is the new hotness? Ruby-powered static Jekyll blogs of course! Thus you see before you the new Chili Pepper Design blog, powered by Octopress (a fork of Jekyll).

Actually it’s not that new or hot anymore, but here are a few reasons why I chose to go the Jekyll/Octopress route regardless:

• Short learning curve - I was also comtemplating setting up a custom Rails blog, but have not found the time
• Static - fast loading! and no database to set up, migrate or maintain
• Ruby - I am learning Ruby, so this is a good excuse to squint at some code.
• Easy hosting - can even be used on GitHub Pages for free
• Easy to theme - not only is the default Octopress rad, but you have total freedom when styling Jekyll blogs
• Hipster plugins - easily show off your Coderwall and StackOverflow bling, etc

Next up I’m going to stretch out my old blogging muscles with a post about how I migrated my blog from Textpattern to Octopress - on windows (dun dun dun).

Cheers!