Time for a change

Here in NZ, we moved to another lockdown - thanks to the new Delta variant of the coronavirus. The past few months have been quite busy developing systems related to my research, and this lockdown has put the related user studies on hold. Now that I have some spare time, might as well rebuild the website - something that I have been postponing for years.

Since I started my blog five years ago, I've been using WordPress as my blogging platform. And although it did what it needed to do, it wasn't very flexible. It also started to feel a bit outdated. I felt the need to set up a new blogging software solution a couple of years back. With the lockdown, that opportunity has finally arrived.

A new solution

Being a Ph.D. student, I do a lot of software development. So rolling out my own software solution isn't a complicated deal for me. But from my experience in professional software development, I know that maintenance is more complex than the initial build. Therefore I opted to go for a solution that doesn't require any server-side code. No code means no server-side bugs. No server-side security risks. And thus less maintenance.

I haven't had much experience with javascript apart from the MagicMirror project. Still, I wanted the new framework to be based on javascript, as it seems to be the trend in 2021. A quick Google search for the best javascript framework brought in Vue.js, and reading further, I discovered Nuxt and Nuxt content developed by the Vue community. I figured this would be a solution that quickly allows me to convert static markdown (text) files into statically rendered websites. If you have no idea what I'm talking about: just know it will enable me to write blogs with less effort.

Couple of things I had on my wish list for the new blog:

• Clean design that looks beautiful on both desktop and mobile.
• The option to switch between light and dark themes.
• A way to organize posts - tags and series
• Fast loading time.
• Clean Typography.
• RSS feed
• Means to check the traffic to site

With Nuxt, Nuxt content, Tailwind CSS, and Netlify, I started the work to check all of those boxes.