This blog tells why and how I have ported my blog from WordPress to Jekyll hosted in GitHub.
Did I like WordPress?
Yes, I liked the WordPress blogging site. I had chosen the free version of the site as I was, however, using it to blog. The site had all the custom templates and even have enough storage. I didn't even need to change the code inside if I had to any customizations, everything was dynamic and pretty handy. I also had few blogs hosted there, and now I don't update it anymore. You can check out the site here.
Personal Website
Initially, I only had a single website only for blogging though I didn't blog much. I had a thought of having my website of my own to show-off my skills. I had forked few of the projects before and tried hosting them in my GitHub Page, I didn't like any and deleted the repository. So, as I have specialization in Flutter but didn't build any flutter-web projects, I thought of giving it a try and started building a personal portfolio which looks simple and minimal. The project was done as I expected with minimal UI, though it took time to build it. You can check the project here.
Now I have a personal website hosted in GitHub Pages and also a blog hosted in WordPress which has redirection from both sides.
Inspiration to port the Blog
I was happy with both the personal website and blog I had. But something was bothering me, which is, both the sites have a different domain. Few of my friends have taken up Jekyll free templates and had their blog sites set up in their GitHub Pages. I had a small doubt that if I can have a complete Jekyll project in a sub-directory inside my website build so both my blog and the personal website would come under the same domain. I started searching in google if I can have a complete website in a sub-directory and after reading many blogs finally got an exact blog which suited my requirement.
Why Did I choose to port the Blog?
So, before starting to port the blog I had some queries in my mind if that was the right choice or not. I think most of them also might have the same queries if they are planning to port their blogging site. I think mentioning the queries maybe are not helpful, but I had a few reasons why I ported the blog.
- As already said, both the sites can come under the same domain
- I can write blog posts in markdown
- A static site and no special database
- Comments: Have a Disqus platform for it
- Site Tracking: Have Google-Analytics integration
So, who does not want to port if I have all the requirements and just missing the first point?
How Did I port the Blog?
I had searched for a few free Jekyll templates which suit my taste and includes all that I need and found out a theme Jekyll-Uno. I downloaded the project and made all the customizations whatever I needed, it took a bit of time as that template was last updated 2 years back and also didn't have proper documentation on how to customize. So, I finished having my blogging website ready to deploy. But, how do I link it in sud-directory of the personal website and have it running? As I told earlier, I found a hack to do that, and you can find all the detailed instruction in the README file of this repository.
Now, I had both the sites under a single domain and this is the very first blog I am writing after I had ported the blog.
Edit: I now shifted my blogging site to Docusaurus. (which is the current blog)