There are two different ways I maintain complete local backups of this site. One uses a web application integrated with Dropbox and SFTP and the other uses Transmit on my Mac. Being a static Pelican blog, a backup means that I just grab copies of the files, so it is fairly easy to automate and schedule.
Backup Box I’ve written about Backup Box before. It’s similar to IFTTT but is focused specifically on moving large numbers of files around the Internet.
This is how I planned my migration to Pelican. iThoughts HD1 is the best way I know of to plan a large complicated project. The new automatic color schemes are pretty.
Click for large version
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Previously on “As the Pelican Turns”: Moving a WordPress site.
In this installment, I’ll share some of what I learned about building a customized Pelican static blog. Specifically, the theme planning and design work. I’ll talk about coding Pelican themes in a later, equally dull, post.
Disclaimer I am not a designer. I am not a web developer. I wear Hawaiian shirts a lot and I’ve been known to wear sandals with socks.
When I moved this site off of WordPress, I wanted three things:
A blogging platform I understood Speed Convenience I decided to go with a static blogging platform that generates simple HTML files and does not have a database back-end. Out of the many freely available options I chose Pelican. Pelican checked all of the right boxes and a couple that I didn’t consider. It’s based on Python, which I feel comfortable working in and it receives regular and meaningful updates.
I will eventually write up the ever so exciting story of building a Pelican static blog site, but until then, here’s a trick that required a visit to the Pelican IRC channel.1
Pelican provides access to any user defined Markdown meta data field. That means I can define a “link:” field to create a DF-style linked post title automatically. Here’s the bit of Jinja code that is in my “Article” and “index” templates.
