I’ve been wanting to start using this blog again for a while now. As I began dusting off the pieces (and running Wordpress
shamefully behind) I realized that WP offered a lot of bells, whistles, and complexity - and none of it was anything I actually needed.

So I started looking around for alternatives, and came across Octopress. Now this, I thought to myself, looks promising - I can actually set up a git-based flow for writing and publishing, without having to muck around with Wordpress’s controls. Being able to use markdown in vim is also a huge plus - web-based editors annoy me, and I’m far less likely to accidentally lose a post by mis-clicking somewhere on the screen.

It doesn’t hurt that I like the default theme - clean and simple. I may tweak it in the future, but I’m comfortable leaving it as is for now.

With some minor tweaks I should be able to deploy using rsync. I may explore using the Chef SCM resource and a custom LWRP to regenerate the site (build artifacts) on the server itself, but for now rsync will be fine.

* That’s a referrer link, BTW - if you follow it and sign up for Linode services, I get discounts. And if you’re looking for a reliable VPS host, Linode offers some of the best service and most reasonable prices out there.