UPDATE 2021-08-30: This blog has since been rewritten in Jekyll.
I’ve tried to create a blog multiple times.
- a WordPress blog while learning web development
-
the Box of Sean (a Blogger blog): I actually put content on there, but I stopped mainly because of the editor:
- it is light theme
- it’s not very easy to use for me
- Opinions: I’m not sure what happened to it; I guess I didn’t care much at the time or I didn’t know how
- Blog de Sean (made with Jekyll Now): I made it just to try it out and actually posted something. I ended up not using it partially because I didn’t like the design
I’m quite confident this one will fail too.
the plan
My plan was to use Node.js to magically generate some files by converting Markdown to HTML somehow (I was quite sure a package like that would exist, and I was right).
Initially, I thought I could use some Git branch trickery so that one branch had all the Markdown files and the other gh-pages branch would only have the generated files. I don’t think that’s how it works, though.
Clearly, I’m using Github pages.
the packages
I was going to use markdown-js, but the Internet doesn’t really seem to care about its existence. They all speak of the legendary markdown-it, so I used that instead.
I wanted a way to include metadata in the Markdown files, so I also installed the markdown-it-meta extension. I might also add some other extensions that can allow me to use superscript, etc. in Markdown in the future, but for now this is enough.
And finally, Highlight.js for some fancy syntax highlighting.
the design
I wanted to go with dark theme, but I didn’t want the design to burn my eyes with its bright text on a black background. The only app I know that does dark theme well is Discord.
I hypothesised that having a dark green background image could work. I’ve used such a design before on my Morse Code Player and the dark theme version of my Billy Goat theme. They didn’t burn my eyes, so that’s good.
I recalled finding a rather nice image that could work; I Googled rain nature and found the image I was looking for: this image (going to the image URL seems to automatically download the image). The website it was on doesn’t seem to have any license or whatever, so I’m hoping I can steal it.
I used Gravit Designer to blur and shrink the image.