Migrating Blog to Wyam
As I sat down to write the post on how I added a basic Tags page to my previously Jekyll Now powered blog/website, I thought about how I'm playing catch up as far as blogging related features go. I had to add an Archive page. I had to add a basic Tags page. The sitemap and feeds feature didn't seem to work and I haven't spent the time to figure those out yet. So before I write even more blog posts and in the interest of saving myself time, I've switched to using Wyam to generate this blog/website.
I should have gone with Wyam from the start, but I found the Jekyll Now repository last minute and thought it seemed too easy not to give it a try. So I gave it a try and yes, it is very easy to get a blog up and running without touching the command line at all. A lot of people have used it and are happy with their blogs. However I think it's time for me to get back to what I really intended to do in the first place, and that is building this static blog/website using Wyam.
Here are some reasons as to why I want to use Wyam for this blog/website:
- It is a static site generator that is written using .NET Core. Being a .NET software developer myself, using it to generate my blog/website is extremely rewarding in some way. I've also wanted to play with .NET Core for awhile now, so this is just another excuse to try it out.
- It supports building pages/websites using Razor, which I think is awesome.
- The configuration file is written using C# code and I love C#.
- You end up with a fully featured Blog when using the Blog recipe. By that I mean, you have a working Archive and Tags page, as well as automatically generated feeds.
- It is very easy to switch themes, even on an existing live site.
I must point out that creating/maintaining a blog using Wyam is slightly more challenging than using the Jekyll Now approach. You will have to use a command prompt/terminal to build your site and getting it hosted is not as simple as just creating a repository in Github and changing some settings. I like the extra challenge though. And writing blog posts using text editors and building the site using a terminal, kinda makes me feel like I'm blogging like a hacker, except I'm using .NET Core and Wyam instead of Jekyll.
Discuss... or leave a comment below.