Software Development | Ruby on Rails
Blog using Jekyll, Git and Disqus

I'm on the hunt for a Ruby on Rails Content Management System. Aside from any benefit for potential clients it would also hopefully cope with this and other blogs I have.

So I was browsing for "Rails CMS" when I bumped into New Bamboo: Migrating our blog from Mephisto to git and Jekyll. It works like this:

  • Git and/or GitHub contain the markdown files for the site/blog
  • Jekyll uses those markdown files to generate a static site based on defined layouts
  • The comments for each post are managed by Disqus

However, nine months later the post New Bamboo: Updating our Blog appeared. In this New Bamboo explain why they have since reverted to a bespoke Ruby on Rails solution for their blog. Specifically:

This week we ported our blog from Jekyll to (and I mention this anticipating a wave of WTFs) a custom rails solution we built in a few hours. The reasons for doing so were numerous, however the primary one was that it was causing a blocker for people writing posts.

Over time, and much to our surprise, we found that it is much easier to log into a web system to create a post than mucking around with the technical tools we use on a daily basis.

Instead of simply writing cool stuff, we were spending too much time getting Jekyll installed on people's computers, running into permissions issues with our deployments and generally cursing loudly. The net result that people were saying they couldn't be bothered.

In their defence, Jekyll-like solutions are likely to be more successful on a single-author blog rather than on a multi-user system, where the cost of set up is not multiplied across the team.

The last bit is key for me as I am a single-author.