Moving to nanoc: Part 2
I’ve now moved completely to nanoc. This blog is now no longer imprisoned under the shackles of Wordpress. Pages definitely load much faster (though that might just be my imagination).
I’ve taken this move as an opportunity to simplify this blog significantly. I found that I wasn’t really using 98% of Wordpress’ features, and of the 2% I was using, I was really only using half because it seemed like I wasn’t using enough features (mmhmm, clearly a very justified reason). I’ve now trimmed it down to just a home page, a post archive, posts and an RSS feed. Minimalist, but it’s exactly what I need.
The only feature I sort of wish I still had was the nice series functionality (if you’re still using Wordpress, I found the Organize Series plugin to be quite good). I might go ahead and implement this feature myself (nothing like an excuse to learn more Ruby), but I’m sort of reticent because I don’t actually want to commit myself to writing a series of blog posts. (I’ll admit that every post in Procrastinate Like Me after the first was kind of a strain to write.)
I did have some trouble in getting comments to work properly. I’ve been using Livefyre, and unfortunately simply dropping in their JavaScript onto a post page didn’t work (it gave an error for any posts that had already existed on the Wordpress blog, saying that the conversation already exists). After contacting their support (who were nice and friendly), I still didn’t get myself to working solution. I’ve solved it now by using a slightly different URL for posts; it’s not the cleanest solution, but it’s one of the simplest. (If you’re thinking, while I’m overhauling everything, why not switch to Disqus or IntenseDebate? Well the answer is that I think Livefyre’s UI is a bit cleaner, which is crucial when placing this kind of widget on my own pages.)
Overall, I think moving to Nanoc has been a worthwhile experience. I learned some Ruby, improved the page load speed of my sites, reduced my hosting costs (marginally), and discovered that Livefyre has decent support, but still has some rough edges. It was definitely an interesting weekend project.