(UPDATE Dec 2022: This article relates to an old version of the blog. Check the git repo for the detailed history.)
(UPDATE Dec 2023: The blog has since moved to https://prose.sh, a Markdown-only blog host. Most of the theme talk below only applies to blogs hosted on GitHub Pages using Zola.)
Introduction #
I don't know what it is about Dark Mode that makes website interfaces feel so... nice.
Just today, I re-did this blog in the Chirpy theme, and I must say the experience wasn't too bad. (Even better after I got rid of the Google Analytics stuff!) The old theme was called Mediumish, and it never quite suited me. Too many images for my liking. I just wanna write!
As for the change, you should only have noticed it if you somehow found my blog just days after my first post. (If you have, I'm sorry.)
The Steps #
The transition was really simple. Cotes Chung had a really nice Tutorial (now on the Wayback Machine) on the subject. I modified his "Fork on GitHub" directions just a little to tweak the theme to my liking:
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I downloaded the theme code, instead of forking it. This is my blog, not a fork of a theme, so this seemed about as reasonable as installing the theme Gem (whatever that is)
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I copied my posts from my old branch. You only need to do this if, before following Chung's directions, you practice writing a post that you actually want to publish it. The install script deletes the
_postsdirectory and commits the change to Git. (I was much dismayed to have discovered this.) Luckily, I use Git. Torvalds wouldnotbe proud. -
I used my avatar in lieu of the default one for obvious reasons.
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I converted most of the tabs to spaces in the HTML templates. I could write a whole blog post on why, but that's a thing to be done another day. For now, refer to this Reddit post.
This was a lot of fun! I might do this again one day. I credit the webpage design to the author of Chirpy. However, for the sake of maintenance, I'm strongly considering re-doing this site in Vue. I don't know how that will work with Jekyll, or even if it will... I just think Vue is neat.
Here's to many bright adventures!