I decided to finally rid myself of the behemoth that is WordPress in exchange for jekyll as my blogging solution.
There are quite a few reasons that made me want to make the switch. But the gist of it all is that jekyll
- is very lightweight and easy to setup,
- ditches databases for a file-based system,
- generates static pages but can still use many awesome tools typically used with dynamic sites,
- most importantly, integrates beautifully with Github.
When I was done making the move, I realized that pretty much 90% of the stuff on this site (and many other recent ones I worked on) is shamelessly stolen remixed from open source code.
The 10% “not-so-open-source” or original code would generally be the template, design, content, and back-end algorithms (if that).
And although this is not really a “for profit” site, the ones that are also utilize front and back-end packages that are openly available.
From the basics of the bullet proof font-face syntax (learnt from Paul Irish), to the intricacies of a mobile-first mentality (inherited from Brad Frost and Luke Wroblewski) and the wizardry of complex websites with big CSS (stolen from Harry Roberts and inuit.css1).
My point is, the open source community is built around love and helps us all. It’s educational, it’s foundational, and quite often even inspirational. That’s why I believe software should generally be free2.
It’s not the code that makes businesses profitable, it’s their product. If it’s useful, people will pay - even if 90% of it is freely available scattered across the web.