Since I moved back to Ohio, I’ve been playing guitar more and even built a cigar box guitar with my dad. There is more of a community around cigar box guitars than I would have guessed, but not as many educational resources as I would like. Naturally, I made my own.
I’ve been using middleman, a static site generator, for prototyping web sites and apps for a little while. I have not, however, used it for to create a production site. Most projects that I work on need to be editable by a team that is not necessarily comfortable with the command line (or HTML for that matter). I decided that, since I was the only person likely to contribute content to the blog, I didn’t need a full fledged CMS.
I decided to approach this project rather differently than I do most paid gigs. I started writing content long before it was built. I also deployed it long before it was “ready for prime time”. I continue to build this site in the open. The blog can be viewed at http://craftyblues.com and forked on GitHub. I’m slowly iterating the design around new needs that develop as I create new content. As such, this site is truly in a (possibly perpetual) beta state.
If you’re not afraid of the command line, creating a blog (or any other site) on middleman is a joy. Since all you deploy is static html, there’s no fear of SQL injections or any other such nonsense to keep you up at night running CMS updates instead of creating content.
Published by Ryan Parsley