New Design, New Stack

After spending the past year working in the world of JavaScript and front-end frameworks, it seemed appropriate to do a reboot of this site, on a new technology stack. As great as it was to run my blog on Sitecore for all those years, it really was overkill for just a blog, and the idea of using a JavaScript static site generator, with a smaller footprint and easier maintenance, brought a certain peace of mind.

The new techphoria414.com runs on:

• Gatsby - A static site generator that will allow me to use markdown to author posts.
• ReactJS - React comes along with Gatsby, and I’d grown accustomed to it while working on Sitecore JSS.
• gatsby-starter-personal-blog - A Gatsby starter by Greg Lobinski which provided a great starting point for the design and functionality of the new site.
• Netlify - Free static site hosting and deployment tools that work seamlessly with a git-hosted Gatsby site.
• Algolia Community - Free site search that was already integrated in to the Gatsby Starter.
• Disqus - No change here, continued using Disqus for comments.

Really, no Sitecore?

Yeah, really. If you’re running a larger site on Sitecore, by all means, run your blog there too — but it was definitely overkill for my needs. And then there were the AWS bills.

What about JSS?

That would still require Sitecore, but running a blog on JSS is a great idea. Jeff L’Heureux showed that in the 2018 Sitecore Hackathon.

What about WeBlog?

I’m not as involved with WeBlog these days, but it’s still under development. It’s a little sad to move off of it, but it’s also really exciting to move to a new development stack that will allow me to post and make changes to the site more easily.

So now what?

Hopefully back to posting more often, maybe even about something other than Sitecore…

Cheers,
Nick