I’m Back or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the ̶b̶o̶m̶b̶ blog

After letting the blog collect dust for another year, I’m finally back with a new post. Fingers crossed this won’t be the only one this year. Over the last few years, I’ve watched prices creep steadily higher at my previous web host, SiteGround. It was getting tough to justify the growing expense, especially since I wasn’t active anymore. But I didn’t want to let it all go, so I moved this site and a few others to NixiHost (if you sign up with this link, I get a referral credit). They are a recommended host on r/webhosting, and their pricing means I’ll be saving some money. So far, so good.

Now that the site is migrated, I have more time to focus on my long-term goals for it. With all the drama surrounding WordPress these days, I’d like to switch to a static site and ditch WordPress. Hugo is my preferred option at the moment. I like the idea of improved speed and security, but I’m not thrilled about writing posts in Markdown with a text editor. Sveltia CMS looks like a promising alternative that is worth a try. I also need to wrap my head around how Hugo themes work. I wanted to go straight from SiteGround to Hugo, but trying to find and figure out how to customize a Hugo theme nearly broke my brain.

Besides this blog, I also have the Dingler Family site (also on WordPress) and my Ignite Countdown site (uses Bootstrap). The Dingler Family site was never very active, and ever since the COVID pandemic, it’s even less so. We had to pause the Dingler reunions for a few years, and by the time we could meet again, Kristin and I were ready to step back from organizing the annual event. Hopefully, we can transition that responsibility to someone else going forward, and I’ll just maintain the site.

The Ignite Countdown site displays a live countdown until the next Microsoft Ignite conference (November 17 in San Francisco!). Now that Ignite is back as Microsoft’s premier conference, the countdown is relevant again, but I’m ready to hand the site and its companion Twitter bot off to someone else. If I were still working and attending the conference, I wouldn’t mind maintaining it, but last year was my last Ignite. So it’s time to either find it a new home or shut it down.

Thanks for sticking with me through this update. What are your thoughts on migrating from WordPress to a static site? Have you tried Hugo or Sveltia CMS? I’d like to hear about your experiences in the comments below.

Stay tuned for more random ramblings.