I’m currently travelling South America (in Colombia to be more specific) and found some time to give my website a refresh.

Before:

The first version was something I hacked together really quickly. A custom single page app.

  • The entire site was one HTML file.
  • Pages were implemented as Markdown files converted to HTML files using a grunt task.
  • When menu buttons were clicked, an AJAX call would fetch the pre-built HTML and inject it into the page.

Pros:

  • Super easy to add new pages.
  • Worked with Markdown files.
  • Header could be downloaded and content injected after (progressive rendering).
  • No page refreshes (single page “app”).

Cons:

  • URL did not change based on the page (no way to link to other pages).
  • HTML generated from Markdown was bloated.
  • No way to selectively load CSS/JS based on the page.

Site Version 1

After:

Since I’m using Github Pages, Jekyll seemed like a better option for building a site.

Changes:

  • Nicer theme (thanks Jekyll defaults!)
  • Background of all pages is the source code for that page #IM-SO-META-EVEN-THIS-ACRONYM.
    (check out show-code to see how that works)
  • Updated content (things have changed since I last built my site…)
  • No more AJAX requests on page load.
  • Better control over what CSS/JS is included with each page.
  • A blog!

Site Version 2

I’m still figuring out all the features of Jekyll, but so far it’s been working reasonably well.

If you find any bugs/issues, don’t hesitate to email me.