Construction of A Blog

NOTE: Blog has now been migrated to Next.js

Introduction

Welcome to my blog! It's created in Gatsby, and it uses Markdown with frontmatter to render the content. 
The actual renderer is Markdown Remark, and it integrates really well into Gatsby.

Here is one of the resources I used to create this: https://www.gatsbyjs.com/docs/adding-markdown-pages/

Along with the `gatsby-node.js` API, Gatsby seems to work really well for blogs, and I especially appreciate the lack of templating. Using Liquid a lot in my day-to-day, it's quite refreshing to use the power of pure JavaScript to power a site. It's a little like a superpower.

The slow march of progress

It has taken quite a push to get this blog off the ground. Mostly built this weekend, a lot of the learning that I found necessary would not have been possible until recently. I am a bit of a code perfectionist, and so using a third-party platform to completely present the blog, or extending a common template, wouldn't suit me.
Complete creative freedom is a requirement in maintaining a blog.

Systems

This blog has recently been migrated from Netlify to CloudCannon (you should know, I am currently an employee of CloudCannon). Once I realised that the blog would be constructed of markdown files with frontmatter, and I needed a content editor, it was a no brainer to plug it into a tool that already excels at this.

Although CloudCannon is mainly build with Jekyll in mind, there is a major push to move to a system that can support Gatsby, Hugo, and potentially Next.js. It is extremely easy to create a Gatsby site, or a Create React Site, or any site really, in CloudCannon. All that is required is to add a prebuild script.

Writing this currently in the CloudCannon editor, I have to admit that the experience is fantastic. Although the font is annoying, there is no lag in writing. As a React developer, I often experience lag if there is no good debouncing in the panel.

Final Thoughts

Coming soon will be a detailed exploration of the blog's structure as I create it, and hopefully a better-structured list of helpful tech.

Until next time,