Creating a blog in Pelican

Welcome to version 1.0 of my new blog site! I thought I'd start with a bit of a meta-post about the creating of the blog and its current meadowlark theme. A few particular comments on the process:

  • The combination of a static site generator like Pelican and simple hosting like GitHub pages does make it very easy to get a site up and running - I have the source hosted in one repository, set to ignore the output directory, then the actual site in output in a second repo, a push on the latter and the live site is updated.

  • GitHub's Atom IDE is perfect for this level of project - I really like JetBrains' PyCharm for projects with more substantial development, but it can be a little heavy for smaller projects like these, and the fact that Atom is based on Less CSS gives me another technology to learn; and

  • I really do not get CSS yet - the easiest way for me to develop is way closer to trial and error than I'd like! Also: IE support is tricky, so I haven't bothered, and GhostCSS is a very handy tool for unbreaking my own errors.

So what's next? I have the following vague ambitions for improvements in the coming weeks/months (note to self: revise this to reflect whenever I get them done!):

  • I really like the way Campo Santo's website changes colour as you sit and watch it - I'm thinking of using the colour to reflect the time of year/day (e.g. split into spring/summer/autumn/winter and morning/afternoon/evening/night and having a suitable colour gradient for each one);

  • Rethink the code block theme - I've currently just taken the basic IDLE theme (the IDE that comes built-in with Python), it might be nice to do something a bit better matched with the rest of the site theme; and

  • Switch the theming to Less CSS (see above), which will hopefully also make the above tasks easier.

Comments !