FrankenBlog! a Halloween Miracle
Embracing Change: The Birth of a New Blog
This year has been nothing short of a thrilling journey! From embarking on a new professional chapter to crafting a sustainable workout routine and streamlining my digital life, I've encountered a myriad of transformations.
You might wonder, how does any of this relate to the birth of what I'm dubbing the FrankenBlog? Well, this blog emerged from my pursuit to simplify my life and eradicate excuses that hinder my blogging endeavors.
Standard Notes
Earlier this year, I decided to reconsider my note-taking and task management systems. As a part of this process, I made a transition to Standard Notes. I intend to share an upcoming blog post detailing the decision-making process behind choosing Standard Notes.
An integral feature of Standard Notes is the utilization of Listed, a free blogging platform seamlessly integrated with your Standard Notes account. This amalgamation was tremendously appealing as it eliminated the need to juggle between platforms. With a mere click, I could convert my notes into an article. Moreover, thanks to my premium account with Standard Notes, I could leverage a custom domain.
During the exploration of these tools, it became apparent that Listed, while impressive, didn't precisely align with the experience I envisioned for visitors to my site. This is where FrankenBlog enters the picture.
FrankenBlog
To start, I call it FrankenBlog because I built this solution during the Halloween seasons. Any other time of year and I would have called this something akin to a headless CMS.
To give an overview: my aim was to post an article via Standard Notes and have it seamlessly appear in the Posts section and RSS feed of my Hugo site.
In order to grant my Hugo site access to my Standard Notes, I needed to publish the notes in a public space. Listed.to came in handy for this purpose, generating its own RSS feed.
Fortunately, Hugo offers three essential features – resources.GetRemote, transform.Unmarshal, and $resource.RelPermalink – empowering me to fetch, parse XML, and generate files. Additionally, Regis Philibert's exceptional article provided insights on integrating these features to create MD files treated as native posts by Hugo.
I won't go into the details since Regis' article cover a well detailed method for creatinga simliar site, but in essence, a blend of various components was necessary to bring this site to life.
Evaluation
I've pondered extensively on whether the complexities involved are justified. My verdict: absolutely. Personally, as I transitioned to simplify my technological footprint, having a Hugo site for my personal portfolio that demands minimal maintenance but allows real-time updates from a fully secure notes app is an enormous win. This seamless and fearless blogging approach is likely to encourage a more consistent and frequent blogging practice. Now let's see if that's true!
Archive links:
https://www.thenewdynamic.com/article/toward-using-a-headless-cms-with-hugo-part-2-building-from-remote-api/
