Starting the blog migration from Drupal to Hugo.

16 years on Drupal (6, 7, 8, 9, and 10). Before that it was a Java SSG called Thingamablog, and before that, Xanga!

Big Q is whether I should wait until I have comment system ready before migrating or bring comments later...

@geerlingguy I've always liked Hugo. I think I still have a living one. <checks> Yep. I guess I'm not paying for nothing on that one... https://jeffwiegand.online/

@geerlingguy Would you be willing to explain why you picked Hugo?

I’ve been thinking of moving to a static blogging platform. None of them stand out to me on an initial look as a clear winner, so I’d be curious to hear why you chose it.

@geerlingguy What are you going to use for comments? There are a couple attempts to leverage mastodon for comments but it's kinda hokey.

I started using Hugo and said I'd figure out comments later and never did. It kept me from blogging as much as I might have otherwise.

@geerlingguy I use BDServer. But it is probably the most insane blog software out there. I like it and hate it in the same time.

@geerlingguy if you need comments, may I suggest taking a look at this, in case you haven't already? :)

https://www.soft-land.org/articoli/cmsfdt

@geerlingguy if you get a lot of comments early after posting, wait until comments are ready. Assuming you’ll post soon after moving. Otherwise it probably doesn’t matter.
Will you copy old comments over?

I really like Hugo. Suits my workflow and allows me to have as few moving parts on the edge as possible.

@geerlingguy
Don't you get comments here already?
Should/can comments section be replies to mastodon toot with echo of a blog entry/note/article?
Lazy can lead to interesting designs.
I won't have to have account for comment on your site.
You won't need dynamicly spinning gears behind blog.
☕️

@foobarsoft it is fast and well documented, otherwise I'd be happy on Jekyll as well.

@crazyeddie either meh or gickup...

@geerlingguy what was your reason to kick Drupal?

For me it was:
When I started with Drupal it was advertised by Dries as an easy and simple blog system.
It developed over time to a complex framework that needs permanent care from a large web consulting company. At least this was my impression.

@geerlingguy I kinda regret not figuring out a non-3rd-party comment solution before I moved to SSGs. I lost them once Disqus went rogue, and never actually took the time to fix it 😭

@geerlingguy we use discourse for comments via embedding.

@geerlingguy Is your blog going to have Activity pub?

@geerlingguy I really like Hugo, even hacked together my own theme (I’m old enough to have hand-coded HTML before CSS was a thing). Haven’t worked out ActivityPub or comments yet though!

@geerlingguy @foobarsoft +1 to this. using it because simple, we'll documented, great extensibility and easy to host. A must!

@ij basically that :)

I could justify upgrading to 8/9/10 since at the time I still had a job tied pretty closely to major Drupal site development and hosting. It was dogfooding/professional development back then.

But lately it's been more of a chore for a simple blog.

@jmtd haha yes

@hisold for now no, just static HTML with nothing fancy. Plan is to make it so maintenance goes from like 2 hours/month to 0.01

@geerlingguy Before doing comments, I would ask “Is there one central place we want discourse to happen?”

Feels like it would be better to have a “Talk about this on ____” and link to Reddit or Discord or a Forum or something

@GrixisGuy I like having it on the blog since that's the only thing on the entire internet that I've been able to keep consistent for over 20 years. Platforms all come and go :(

@geerlingguy I know many people that moved away from Drupal. In fact nearly all members of the former local Drupal user group that organized a barcamp in 2011.

3 years before I met Dries and Hagen at a barcamp in cologne, which was short before Dries moved to the US.

I find it somewhat sad that Drupal evolved into that enterprise-only direction, but well… that‘s the way of life…

@jmtd @geerlingguy The gickup I find is for backing up git repositories.

@crazyeddie @jmtd Oops, I mean giscus!

@geerlingguy how would you use gickup for comments? I'm currently using the mastodon route, but I like the look of meh and will certainly be testing that this weekend!

@jevans Oops, I mean giscus!

@geerlingguy Hugo is great, but is it worth the effort to get comments running on a blog? Is it better to put the effort into engagement on Youtube/Mastodon etc?

@geerlingguy I built my own likes and comments system for my Jekyll based website. The backend uses Python and FastAPI along with Postgres for storing everything.

@geerlingguy I went the extra mile and created a whole DuckDB based analytics backend to, so I can see what people are looking at, where they are based, if they've been before, posts getting a log of attention and weekly trends.

https://www.kevsrobots.com/stats

@geerlingguy my vote is bring the comments later.

@josh I'm leaning that way. Close to finished with content migration!