Booting Codeage
I feel the urge to detach my tech-related posts from tumblr to a better platform. Two reasons; code syntax highlighting and localisation. I know you could use workarounds or just use gist for tumblr, but I need more flexibility.
I researched options and decided to go with Middleman. Several reasons behind my decision;
- it is an active platform which is created and maintained by great people from thoughbot,
- it is based on ruby which I want to learn more about,
- supports syntax highlighting and localisation, and
- can be deployed using github pages (free hosting ftw)
Middleman provides templates to kickstart a blog. Even so, it still allows endless customisation if you want to make a full on customised website. This is the sweet spot of balance between easiness and flexibility.
There is a great walkthrough on how to style out your middleman blog. I highly recommend it if you want to work your middleman site, even I used it to mimic the theme of my main blog into this site.
For more info about the tools, check out Bourbon (Sass mixin library), Neat (grid framework) and Bitters (default settings for Bourbon).
Summary
Although there are many things to setup, but I am pleased with the result. It was rewarding experience for a novice rubyist like me to have created, styled and set up my own site. Check the source of this page if you are interested.