From Ikiwiki to Hugo

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 08:27:10 -0400

Back in the days of Etch, I converted this blog from Drupal to ikiwiki. I remember being very excited about this brand new concept of static web sites derived from content stored in a version control system.

And now over a decade later I’ve moved to hugo.

I feel some loyalty to ikiwiki and Joey Hess for opening my eyes to the static web site concept. But ultimately I grew tired of splitting my time and energy between learning ikiwiki and hugo, which has been my tool of choice for new projects. When I started getting strange emails that I suspect had something to do with spammers filling out ikiwiki’s commenting registration system, I choose to invest my time in switching to hugo over debugging and really understanding how ikiwiki handles user registration.

I carefully reviewed anarcat’s blog on converting from ikiwiki to hugo and learned about a lot of ikiwiki features I am not using. Wow, it’s times like these that I’m glad I keep it really simple. Based on the various ikiwiki2hugo python scripts I studied, I eventually wrote a far simpler one tailored to my needs.

Also, in what could only be called a desperate act of procrastination combined with a touch of self-hatred (it’s been a rough week) I rejected all the commenting options available to me and choose to implement my own in PHP.

What?!?! Why would anyone do such a thing?

I refer you to my previous sentence about desperate procrastination. And also… I know it’s fashionable to hate PHP, but honestly as the first programming language I learned, there is something comforting and familiar about it. And, on a more objective level, I can deploy it easily to just about any hosting provider in the world. I don’t have to maintain a unicorn service or a nodejs service and make special configuration entries in my web configuration. All I have to do is upload the php files and I’m done.

Well, I’m sure I’ll regret this decision.

Special thanks to Alexander Bilz for the anatole hugo theme. I choose it via a nearly random click to avoid the rabbit hole of choosing a theme. And, by luck, it has turned out quite well. I only had to override the commento partial theme page to hijack it for my own commenting system’s use.

Ikiwiki upgrading and disabled comments

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:32:44 +0000

Although not nearly as hairy as helping David Swanson upgrade upgrade his Drupal blog, the ikiwiki upgrade from version 2 to version 3 has been a bit hairy.

My biggest difficulty is that my published version of the blog is running Debian Etch (and pulling ikwiki from Debian Lenny) while my laptop is running Debian Squeeze. Hence, my laptop pulled in ikiwiki 3, which as prompted me to upgrade my blog, whereas my published wiki is still running 2.53.

My temporary solution to this problem is to disable commenting and make my published blog a plain rsync’ed version of the version on my laptop. Sorry! Commenting will return soon.

Cms on Website of Jamie McClelland

From Ikiwiki to Hugo

Ikiwiki upgrading and disabled comments