I started this blog by moving from Blogspot in 2017. I decided that trying to be too WYSIWYG was too annoying, and that I wanted to just write a document in something easy like Markdown, never taking my fingers off my keyboard, and using Jekyll as a static site generator and using Github Pages was the move.

And I was trying to add the most recent post to the blog and I started getting errors, seemingly forcing me to move to Github Actions.

Ultimately, the problem seems to be that the SCSS munger is looking for a file that isn’t there, and the move would’ve been to wipe the Gems and rebuild, I think, but those things being in my github.workspace where I can’t go (I don’t think), I can’t fix it.

But I want to be able to add new things to my blog.

My friend Chris pointed me to Render, which, honestly, is the first I ever heard of it, which makes me think I don’t have my finger on the pulse of the internet. I tried it. I first put up a HTML/CSS/JS tool I wrote a while ago that scratched my guitarist itches, Guitr. Yes, I came up with this idea when Flickr was fairly new and hip, and I need to rethink the UI and add a few adds on it to start getting gear money.

Anyway, once I was happy with it, I decided to try to create a second home for this blog, and wouldn’t you know it, It was easy.

  • set Repository (which you have to share from your Github Applications tab)
  • set Branch
  • add the Build Command, and instead of the more simple suggested jekyll build, I made it bundle exec jekyll build, which might be belt-and-suspenders and might be me about to make a fragile thing, but eh, I’ll learn when I have to.
  • tell it Publish Directory, which is _site by default.

Looks to be that, as with Github Pages, it is write, add, commit, push and forget, which is what I like in a site generator.

I did consider forking my own repo, so that I could keep the git history but be able to separate everything, but you can’t fork your own repos. I could, I dunno, actually use my Bitbucket and GitLab repos, but why work that hard?

The old links to the blog should be fine. Considering going through and changing every https://jacoby.github.io/path/to/thing to /path/to/thing, I might buy a vanity domain for it, and I think I’ll spend some time to get Actions working again, but until then, https://jacoby-lpwk.onrender.com/ will be my blog’s URL.

If you have any questions or comments, I would be glad to hear it. Ask me on Mastodon or make an issue on my blog repo.