Writing / Note
My First Markdown Post
Why the previous version of this site moved to Markdown, and how it was built and deployed.
On this page
This is the first post on the site that I wrote in Markdown instead of hand-written HTML. It is a small change with a big effect on how pleasant the site is to maintain.
How it worked
The previous version of the site was built with Eleventy. I wrote a post as a plain Markdown file, and Eleventy converted it to HTML and slotted it into a shared base layout (base.njk).
Why it was worth it
- Writing is just plain text. No markup to fight while thinking about what to say.
- Builds are instant. Saving a file and seeing the page happens right away.
- Deployment is a script. The generated
dist/folder was pushed to an LXC container by a deployment script, so publishing was a script instead of a manual copy.
Where it went
Later, only the published HTML of that site remained. Recovering a site when only the HTML remains is the follow-up.