Back to Business
After a long blogging hiatus, the author returns to share why they stepped back, migrated from Orchard to Docpad, and navigated career changes.
It has been a long time since I was doing active blogging. There are multiple reasons for that, and one of them is being a lazy ass.
I changed my blog from Orchard to Docpad for almost no reason. I just wanted my few pages to look different from other pages. And that would take a little bit more effort if I was going to do it with Orchard. So, I checked out on the net how to do it. I know Rob was using Nesta but I am not good with Ruby, at least not that much, and moreover Ruby was giving issues on my Windows machine. And switching to my VM just to write a blog... Naahhh!!!!
Then I moved to Docpad. I had to lose some of my comments, which were part of the Orchard system. But it was fine. The only painful thing is I had to do a lot more work just to get it up the way I wanted. It was not like set up and go using Windows Essentials' Live Writer. But it is giving me flexibility.
And another reason is the workload at my day job. Things are moving faster than I can plan for. I was trying to learn other languages and tools, moving out of my comfort zone. So, the number of posts is less. Sadly!!!
I also changed my job and my city, so that transition does take time, especially leaving a city like Bangalore was a bit of a pain for me. Now, I am out of shock, almost!
But the biggest loss I think is my Google juice. My site is not coming on the front page if someone searches my name. Luckily I am and I was active on my Twitter and it points to my site. So, still some juice stays there.
And I also owe an apology to any readers who came to my site while I was modifying details. The site was in a bad state and I pushed it to Heroku, which was totally uncool of me. But there were some issues related to the domain and I am too lazy to maintain production and master branches, at least for my blog. I am the only one using it and I am not so popular, at least not as of now.
But now things are far better than they were before. The site CSS is quite good and the content seems more readable. You can check it out, comment, and share.
Check out the blog entries. I am still changing things as I go, but there will be no major changes. But do give me your suggestions if you have any regarding the site.
Things still to come even after this blog:
- New home page design
- Tags for all blogs
- Tags/Category pages to jump around
- Search page (damn simple Google search, what else?!)
Stay tuned...
Frequently Asked Questions
The author wanted more customization flexibility for their blog's appearance without the extra effort required by Orchard. While Docpad required more initial setup work compared to using Windows Live Writer, it provided the flexibility needed to make the site look exactly as desired.
The comments were lost during the migration from Orchard to Docpad. The author decided this was an acceptable trade-off for gaining the flexibility and improved design that Docpad offered.
The site lost significant Google ranking visibility, with the blog no longer appearing on the front page when searching the author's name. However, the author maintains some search visibility through active Twitter presence that links back to the site.
Upcoming improvements include a new home page design, tags for all blog posts, dedicated tags/category pages for navigation, and a search functionality. The author promises no major changes beyond these planned features.