---
title: Blog Colophon
date: 2020-10-03
---
It's archives all the way down! This is archive version of how I've run my blog over the years. The [[Colophon]] page covers "this" site, which is sort of a superset archive. The plan is I'll keep it active from now on in this Digital Notes Garden format.

## July 2020 - current

The long(er) form content from the (original) `blog.bmannconsulting.com` has all been imported here.

I swapped that blog domain to [[Micro.blog]], and that's where I post photos and short content, and sort of more non tech bloggy content. Yes, there is a [colophon there too](https://blog.bmannconsulting.com/colophon).

## May 2020

This blog is currently powered by [Jekyll 4](http://jekyllrb.com) hosted on [Netlify](http://netlify.com). Netlify builds the site from a private git repo on Github.

I write short [social posts](https://blog.bmannconsulting.com/archives/social/) on my phone via [micropub](https://blog.bmannconsulting.com/tags/micropub/). There are a variety of [micropub clients](https://indieweb.org/micropub-clients) you can browse on the IndieWeb site. The [Indigenous native app for iOS](https://indieweb.org/Indigenous_for_iOS) works most reliably.

I also use [Quill](https://quill.p3k.io/docs) as a <abbr title="Progressive Web App">PWA</abbr> on my phone. It also works great for all kinds of posts on desktop browsers too, including a first draft of long posts.

Long posts are most often finalized in [VS Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/) and published via git.

Full size images are uploaded and stored in git. Various thumbnail sizes are generated on the fly via [images.weserv.nl](https://images.weserv.nl/).

[All the Best Recipes](https://allthebest.recipes) are where the long form food / cooking posts go, although I often share them via links and images posted as social posts here.

My [@bmann Instagram](https://instagram.com/bmann) I manually post to, either a variant of a social post I've already made here, or on the All the Best Recipes site. I cross post to Facebook from Instagram. My "rule" is no posting pictures to Instagram until they've been put somewhere permanent under my control. There is also an [@allthebestrecipes Instagram](https://instagram.com/allthebestrecipes), because really I need more places to post about food.

I'm now running [paulrobertlloyd's IndieKit](https://paulrobertlloyd.github.io/indiekit/) micropub server, and tweaking the display, feeds, and cross-posting to [Micro.blog](https://micro.blog/boris), which in turn posts to [my @bmann Twitter account](https://twitter.com/bmann).

You can visit [my micropub server](https://bmann-indiekit.herokuapp.com) to learn more about it. The post types that I have special display and treatment for are:

* Article -- long form posts in the Blog category by default
* Note -- the vast majority of short posts, often with images attached
* Bookmark -- so I can keep my bookmarks local
* Reply -- because I wanted to support it for leaving comments on other people's posts. This is also the RSVP type, which I've just added extra support for

The others work, I just haven't coded special treatment for them, so they likely don't display correctly.

Turned off `jekyll-feed` plugin to have Jekyll generate a custom [RSS feed](/feed.xml), because of the way I customize different kinds of micropub posts.

<hr />

## Previous Editions

### Jekyll 3 on Netlify (Minimal Mistakes)
August 2018 - May 2020

I write on my phone or my Chromebook. On the Chromebook, [Caret](http://thomaswilburn.net/caret/) is a text / coding editor I use. The [Netlify CMS](https://www.netlifycms.org) lets me edit in a browser.

Short form links get sent to Twitter and/or shared on the [Frontier Community](https://community.frontierfoundry.co)[^deprecatedff]. My [Tumblr](http://tumblr.bmannconsulting.com) is rarely used. Tweets are archived at [tweets.bmannconsulting.com](http://tweets.bmannconsulting.com).

[^deprecatedff]: The Frontier Community Discourse site got turned into [All the Best Recipes](https://allthebest.recipes). I might re-use it for comments again in the future, for now have Webmentions turned on.

tldr; the Netlify CMS doesn't support drafts on Gitlab, so put things back on Github.

Also moved to [Michael Rose's Minimal Mistakes theme](https://mmistakes.github.io/minimal-mistakes/). Fighting with nokogiri on the Chromebook means no emoji. This meant posts have a slightly different default layout again: ```sed -i 's/layout: posts/layout: single/' *.md```.

Netlify CMS is technically still installed, but rarely used.

**In September 2018**, I  [added a bunch of IndieWeb and Micropub interfaces](https://blog.bmannconsulting.com/micro-blog-jekyll-micro-pub-and-indie-web/) and created social posts and bookmarks.

While [OwnYouGram](https://ownyourgram.com/) was working, I posted to [my @bmann Instagram](https://instagram.com/bmann), and those posts would automatically be republished on this site.

Somewhere around this time frame, JSON feeds were added at [micro.json](/micro.json), [micro-bookmarks.json](/micro-bookmarks.json), and [feed.json](/feed.json), and syndicated to [Micro.blog](https://micro.blog/boris), which I pay to re-publish on other networks. Briefly they went to LinkedIn, now mainly get sent over to Twitter.

**In May of 2019**, I [added a Webmentions server](https://blog.bmannconsulting.com/run-your-own-web-mentions/).

### Jekyll 3 on Netlify
June 2018 - August 2018

Most writing happened on Medium after November 2014 across various company publications, with the [medium.bmannconsulting.com](http://medium.bmannconsulting.com) subdomain being the one where permanent posts end up. I should probably get around to getting a Medium download so I have them.

To upgrade, I did some yak shaving.

I created a new Gitlab [borismann](http://gitlab.com/borismann) and imported from Bitbucket. I connected Netlify to it, but it failed to build. Digging in, I created a new branch <code>2018-reboot</code> and deleted the <code>Gemfile.lock</code>, and edited <code>Gemfile</code> to use Jekyll 3, a newer Ruby, and nuked the rack stuff. <code>bundle install</code> got things going.

There is some nonsense with the file watching not working, so <code>bundle exec jekyll serve --no-watch</code> was needed.

The default post type is now "posts", which meant replacing across all files [using sed](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/112023/how-can-i-replace-a-string-in-a-files/112024#112024): <code>sed -i 's/layout post/layout: posts/' *.md</code>.

<code>layout: none</code> used for the feed and sitemap is now <code>layout: null</code>.

Yay! It builds. Edit CNAME to point at Netlify. Enable HTTPS.

While I was at it, I also migrated the [bmannconsulting main archive](https://www.bmannconsulting.com) to Netlify as well.

### Jekyll 2 on Heroku
August 2014 - November 2014

This blog is powered by [Jekyll 2](http://jekyllrb.com) hosted on [Heroku](http://heroku.com). I'm using [Andy Croll's RackJekyll instructions and buildpack](http://andycroll.com/2014/01/19/serving-a-jekyll-blog-using-heroku/) so that the site is generated on the server.

I'm increasingly a fan of static site generators for content-focused publishing projects. I've written both a [presentation on static site generators](/ssg-lightning-talk) and an overview of [node.js-based generators](/node-static-site-generators).

The design is [GPLv2 licensed, So Simple by Michael Rose](http://mademistakes.com/articles/so-simple-jekyll-theme/).

The comments are powered by [Disqus](http://disqus.com). All comments are welcome, although I reserve the right to tell you to go post your thoughts in your own space somewhere.

Tweets to new stories are scheduled using [Buffer](https://bufferapp.com/) and published on my [@bmann](http://twitter.com/bmann) account.

The domain _bmannconsulting.com_ is over a decade old. [NameCheap](http://namecheap.com) is the domain registrar and DNS host, and is still my recommendation for new domain registrations.

Posts are typically written in Markdown with [Byword](http://bit.ly/bywordapp-bmann) on a Macbook Air or iPad Mini. Code for the site is edited with [Atom](https://atom.io/).

My writing here tends to be long form (1000+ words) original pieces, aside from aggregation-plus-commentary of embedded [Storify](http://storify.com) content. For example, this piece on [the Microsoft Surface launch](/reactions-microsoft-surface). The content is also rarely personal, mainly focusing on tech-related subjects.

Short form link blog content is at [links.bmannconsulting.com](http://links.bmannconsulting.com), and is powered by [Postachio](http://postach.io), an Evernote-powered blogging platform. I wrote about [link blogging with Postachio](/postachio-link-blogging).


### HarpJS on Harp Platform
April 2013 - August 2014

This blog is running on the [Harp Platform](http://harp.io), a lightweight web server with pre-processing built in, with files uploaded via my own Dropbox account. Also check out the [HarpJS](http://harpjs.com) open source project.

The design is a [CC-BY licensed HTML5 template called Striped](http://html5up.net/striped/), which uses the [skel.js](http://skeljs.org/) front end framework to make the site responsive.

Tweets to new stories are hand-posted using [Tweetbot](http://tapbots.com/software/tweetbot/), although the RSS feed is also syndicated using [dlvr.it](http://dlvr.it) to various places, including [@horse_eboris](http://twitter.com/horse_eboris).

Code for the site is edited with [Sublime Text](http://www.sublimetext.com/).

### Octopress on Heroku
April 2012 - August 2013

I archived my main site to Octopress-generated flat files on Amazon S3, and moved this site to Octopress on Heroku. I wrote up the details of the [migration from Drupal 6 to Octopress and Amazon S3](http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/migration/).

For both sites, the entire source was / is in my own Dropbox account, so that I could create drafts and edits on any machine. This site was also in a private git repo on Bitbucket. I still needed to have the entire Ruby / Octopress build chain available on some machine to create new entries.

### Posterous
January 2010 - April 2012

I split off my blog into it's own subdomain. I selected Posterous because I liked built-in comments, and in general it felt more suited to long form writing than Tumblr did. Being able to cross-post back to my main Drupal site so that I would have a copy of the content was also great.

### Drupal (various versions 3.x - 6.x)
November 2002 - April 2012

For the last period, the site was hosted on [Omega8](http://omega8.cc), which specializes in managed Drupal hosting on top of the Aegir mass hosting system. The actual database / content stretched back many versions of Drupal, through a variety of content re-organization and hosting changes.

Comments from this period are currently offline.

### HTML, Pmachine, & Early Experiments
December 2001 - 2003

Bits and pieces of static HTML and various PHP scripts, including [Pmachine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EllisLab) as a personal blog that ran concurrrently with installs of PHPNuke and later my Drupal site.