Reboot

I rebuilt my blog once again. Perhaps that will be my shtick - for every blog post, I completely rebuild my blog and then just talk about the pros and cons. Sounds exhausting!

But yes while I built my site using Hugo just a couple months ago, I decided to rebuild it using the Remix framework. Same look and feel, but entirely new internals.

Benefits

Why go through all this trouble? Apart from being indecisive in nature, the problem was I felt closed off using Hugo. If I was purely writing, Hugo would have been the preferred option as it builds much faster and is easier to host. But I kept wanting to do more with the site than just write. Perhaps tinker with a simple web app design or something similar.

To scratch this itch, I didn't want to spin up a separate service extending beyond the singular website deployment. I considered a JAMstack approach where I have Hugo make API calls, but I have grown tired of managing serverless functions for small use-cases such as this.

At work, we have embraced newer technologies and for one of our projects, we landed on Remix. While the framework has some rough edges, overall it has been fun and productive to work with. And it really shines for building simple websites that only need a basic database and user/management solution. It seemed like a good fit, so I started rebuilding.

Overall, I'm happy with how it has turned out. Like Hugo, I can still write in pure markdown, and the new entries are automatically listed on the blog index. But now that it is no longer just a static website, but a running Node.js process running on Fly.io. I have a SQLite database, a filesystem, and a shell at my disposal. Ahhhh, feels good.

My plan all along was to open source the design and its finally ready. Feel free to fork and use as your own or submit an issue.