Something Out of Nothing

Disclaimer: This is a very geeky post, if you are geek-sensitive, please feel free to skip this one.

It feels really good to be back in control of my website. I missed hunkering down with the code and losing time while figuring things out. I’ve had that on and off over the last several years, but nothing gets me there like web development. I lose myself and my sense of time; it makes me wish we had more than twenty-four hours in a day.

After finishing the Two Bit Consulting website, I was feeling a little listless and in need of another project. I had moved my domain and hosting to Micro.blog a while ago, which is a GREAT platform and there are parts of it that I’ll miss, my posts and content migrated with me, so nothing was lost, but I really wanted to get back to a self-managed, self-hosted situation. Working with Anthropic’s Claude for support and assistance, I installed Hugo, a static site generator written in Go, on my computer and hooked it up to a new git repository on GitHub. A simple git push publishes the updated files to GitHub, which then automatically deploys to my Dreamhost-hosted site. I realized I could go a step further with Apple Shortcuts and created an automation to monitor the local folder for changes, which would then trigger the terminal commands to push to GitHub. It’s not quite as user friendly as a managed host like Micro.blog, but it works very well and it feels a lot more genuine to me, kind of like driving a stick shift after years of automatic transmissions. I’m much more in control and own the whole process, plus it saves me some annual costs! Also, with the automation, I can post from my mobile devices, since the local directory is hosted in my iCloud Documents folder and syncs to all my devices. As soon as my computer sees the changed files, it will push them to GitHub!

You can see the result right here — you’re already reading it. Welcome to the new jakefowler.com!