The Switch from GitHub Pages to Netlify & Forestry.io

Well it’s been an age since I posted last. But I blame it on the fact that writing a post meant I had to be on my own computer, using a text editor, and then pushing to GitHub so I could host my Jekyll site on GitHub Pages. The past year I was hardly on my own computer. After a day (or five) of working and staring at a screen why would I also want to go on the computer at home? Plus, sometimes I’d actually be more inclined to write on the go, such as with my phone or a Chromebook at a coffee shop. Except nope – not that simple. I missed Ghost, the old blogging platform I used that had everything a girl could want: Markdown formatting; a well-designed, minimal admin interface; mobile blogging abilities; SEO and AMP…sigh…

Well, hopefully all that is about to change, folks! You see, this past weekend I picked up my old habit of looking into every type of CMS out there, including finding a CMS for a static site. I should have tried years ago – there are tons! But me being picky when it comes to design, I wanted to find one that really, cough, speaks to my aesthetic.

Enter Forestry.io, a Git-backed CMS. It has a really clean interface that is also responsive, aka I can write on the go. Also a plus: There is a free personal tier for your own one-woman (or one-man) projects. It was simpler than I expected to set up with my existing Jekyll site in GitHub, though they also have step-by-step tutorials with templates to set up brand new sites as well. For another project I’m excited about, I may try Hugo, the other static site generator they support. But, you cry, GitHub Pages only supports Jekyll static sites! Not to fear.

Through Forestry.io, I learned of another company called Netlify. It hosts static sites, deploys every time I push to GitHub, even provides free HTTPS. And – this is the truly amazing part – it’s free for personal projects (or any projects that don’t have a team of 2+ making commits). I added this site to their platform, moved my domain, and took down my GitHub Pages, uh, page.

I’m really looking forward to writing more blog posts in the near future, and getting my other project up and running using the JAMstack (mine is Jekyll, Forestry.io, and Netlify, as noted in this article). If you have any tips, please share them by tweeting me!