First


So I made a blog… yep. This is the first post. Where (as I have noticed, seems to be common practice) I will describe and reason about the choices I made about the blog platform.

I am using Jekyll to create a static site hosted on github pages. I like this because it aligns well with a work flow I am familiar with and enjoy. It also means that the tools to create the site are all open source. I like being able to dig a little deeper, in order to find out how things work.

Themes of a blog post

In order to learn my way around Jekyll I decided I would first install a custom theme and then customise it to be my own. I picked Pixyll because of its clean bold look. I also like that there is a focus on content and and the theme does not rely on an arty image header or fancy menus etc.

What use for a name?

I decided I wanted to border the content, to have it look somewhat like a page of paper. Along with this I wanted the navigation links to appear in line with the site title and tag line. It was important that this all works well and looks good on mobile (or other smaller screens). I adjusted the navigation links so that they will drop to a new line, and center under the title when a smaller screen is used. Finally I decided that these modifications meant that the theme was no longer true to its original incarnation. In homage to its prior form I dubbed the theme Pixyl-Paper.