Grabbing the Blog by the Horns
The title of the this post would’ve made more sense had I managed to get my blog moved from Grav CMS over to Statamic sooner. Before the Statamic website refresh. Before Buckshot Thunderstride (the fantasic elk above) was removed from the homepage in favor of the new design (which is gorgeous). I started the process of moving the blog away from Grav CMS some months ago... but I got lazy. Copying each blog post by hand is a tedious process. I also discovered a bunch of old LiveJournal posts from my LJ Blog (first entry was July 10th of 2003) that was still active. So I went through and copied those and put those all in the new blog.
And then my faithful 2015 MacBook Pro bit the dust. The laptop was starting to really slow down, and even after running the First Aid options in Disk Utilty, the laptop still struggled. I even did a full system wipe and reinstalled the OS. But still, I would type and the letters would appear about 1 to 2 seconds after the keystroke. And then I noticed there was a lot of heat coming from the keyboard. So, yeah.
I was building everything locally using Statamic and Herd, and thankfully I managed to store the work I’d done in Github (who’s a good developer!!). I’ve since been putting off buying a laptop, as I feel like I have a Mac Studio, so I don’t actually need a new laptop. But it is nice to not always be shut up in the office. It’s nice to hang out at the dining room table with the wife, even if we’re both plugged in. So I’ve been going back and forth about buying a laptop... but man, those new MacBook Air M4s are a very tempting deal. I imagine I’ll pull the trigger on within the month.
But back to Statamic. I’ve been wanting to move the backend of my blog to Statamic for awhile. I really like the control panel and the way everything is setup just seems to make sense to me (mostly). There’s also some great tutorial videos on YouTube and also on Laracasts, which I purchased a subscription for (but the Statamic tutorials are free!). I’ve had an idea for a new website for some time now, and I didn’t want to build it in Wordpress. PHP, with Laravel, feels like a good fit, so I took some of my freelance money and purchased a lifetime subscription. I already feel like I’ve received my money’s worth with the Statamic tutorial, and the videos I’ve watched so far as an intro to Laravel have been instructional as well.
But before I get too far off topic, back to Statamic. As I’ve noted, I tend to jump around with various CMSs, always wanting to try the latest and greatest. But I’ve also been wanting to stick with the flat-file CMS approach. I like the simplicity of not needing a database, and it’s one less avenue for script kiddies to attack the blog. I’m also not super well-versed on databases in general, and though systems like Wordpress handle the heavy lifting, using Markdown files for the blog makes more sense. I do plan on utilizing a database when building the website I want to use Laravel for, so that’ll be a learning experience.
I also prefer the control panel Statamic uses. It’s cleaner, and allows for greater customization than was apparent with Grav CMS. And, to be frank, maybe I was a bit bored. And, if I’m completely honest, I really enjoy the way Jack McDade, one of Statamic’s founds, presents his tutorials on the Laracasts website. There’s something that I find very down to earth about them. It’s always a plus to be entertained while learning!