I’m actually supposed to be working on naming my hopeful new business right now, but I was poking around and realized that it’s been just over a year since I revamped the site, noving from WordPress to Hugo.

I also noticed a couple of typos that I need to fix, so why not ramble a little while I’m at it?

Hugo vs. WordPress: My Thoughts

No contest.

No, really.

I have been so much happier with Hugo, it’s not even funny. I may be strange in that I use emacs and markdown to write blog posts, but the fact that I’m comfortable with these things means that I can focus far more easily on my writing. Writing into a web form with WordPress was incredibly troublesome and distracting.

Yes, I’m aware of the dedicated WordPress clients. No, they did not fix the problem.

Hugo Just Works. Combine that with GitLab CI pipelines, and I have pretty much everything I need. The only significant downside is that it takes a couple of minutes to post something, because it needs to make its way through said pipelines.

It’s probably time for another round of optimization there, but whatever.

I’m happy with it. I’m still happy with the look and feel, and I’m happy with the machinery. Unlike WordPress, I don’t log in and immediately think “Damn, I need to upgrade,” or “I wonder if more security holes have popped up in my plugins?” And I don’t have to fight the browser to post.

No contest, like I said. WordPress just sucks.

The difference shows, too: I’ve written almost as many posts in the ‘23-‘24 timeframe than I have during the entire rest of the blog’s history. More tellingly, I’ve written quite a few more words in the last two years, than in the rest of the time combined.

It’s just easier.

Going Forward

So what’s next?

More of the same, really. I did suffer a brief lapse last year, but that’s not unexpected. This site is not a business for me, or anything of the sort. It’s my personal fiefdom. It follows whatever things I feel like publicly commenting about, for whatever reason.

Sometimes I don’t feel like publicly commenting at all; this is normal – though going for years that one time was a bit excessive, even for me.

I have thoughts and things to talk about these days, so that’s good. For right this minute, though, the business is taking most of my time. I’m trying to treat it like the job it is, and it’s looking like it’s definitely going to go forward.

Assuming I can find a name for it, anyway.

So that’s going to take a lot of time, but I will still continue to post on random topics. For example, I still need to update you all on my puzzling adventures; I’ve done quite a few since I last posted!

Hopefully my four or five readers will actually enjoy my ramblings!

P.S.: Nibble & Pixel say “Hello”. They’re curled up with me while I write, which is always wonderful. I do love my cats…