Over the last couple of months I have been thinking about how this site is run and managed. I decided that it was time to make some changes.
When I first made the decision to move the site to Drupal, the decision was driven around not only what I was already doing with MovableType, but also the thought that I could maybe move beyond just being a simple blog. At the time, a lot of sites had a blog (usually WordPress) managing some content and then a forum to allow what ever community happened around the site to talk to itself. Drupal had the flexibility to put those two parts together, even if it was somewhat a strained relationship.
Unsurprisingly, this site didn’t spawn any kind of community. A few family members, a few coworkers and a few random one-time visitors is all it really ever attracted. I eventually converted the forum to “regular” content and disabled the functionality, but I was still posting my own content.
Once I discovered Markdown, I started to write all my content in Markdown. Doing Markdown in Drupal is not hard, there is a module for that, but with the move from Drupal 6 to Drupal 8, that started to become a problem. Everytime I upgraded the software for the site using drush I would have to readd the library for Markdown. If I didn’t readd it, then the site would be broken.
I do find what the Drupal community is doing with version 8 very interesting, but right now all I really need is a simple website. And I also want something that lets me practice using the technologies that I am using more at work. And recently, that is DevOps. I want to be able to manage the content in Markdown using git and use a Jenkins to get the content delivered.
After looking at what was availalbe, I decided to move the site over to Hugo. This was driven by Hugo just seeming to be the simpilist option. And right now, that seems to be what I am looking for.
Not surprisingly, the footprint of the site on the server has gone done significantly. I still have other sites using Drupal, or some other software, and I am still using Drupal for some internal projects, but SysMango.com is now done with Hugo.