personal site

I mentioned back in 2019 that I needed to writeup how I’m using hugo to build this static site on my Android phone. So here it is! Only 3 years later First I’ve got my complete setup to clone the git repo written here (just updated!). apt install hugo in termux cd to the hugo folder run with drafts locally with hugo server -D --noBuildLock Go to http://localhost:1313 to review kill with ctrl+c when done Do a final build with hugo --noBuildLock Then push with rsync as detailed in another of my old writeups I’ve had to add the –noBuildLock flag to the hugo commands because of an issue with build lock on Android.

I can now push to my site from my phone via rsync! I added my Termux install’s ssh pub key to my nearlyfreespeech.net account. I wrote a one line script to make the rsync call that Guillermo Garron describes on his blog: rsync -v -rzz --checksum --chmod=Du=rwx,Dgo=rx,Fu=rw,Fog=r --delete <path-to-site>/ <user>@<server>:/<path> I had to install rsync via the following command: pkg install rsync The -z compression option Garron recommends doesn’t work in Termux but switching to -zz (as the command’s own warning states) does work.

I’m writing this entirely from my Android phone! I spent quite a few hours trying to figure out how to get a clone of my git repository on here and hit a lot of dead ends. I tried multiple sets of instructions for AIDE and mGit with no success. Finally I found the Termux app which actually supports everything I need! For some reason Termux was not coming up in any of my searches for git clients on Android.

I started setting up Hugo to run my site. Hopefully this will decrease the friction for blogging and I’ll start writing more, but I make no promises. So far Hugo seems to be a pretty straight forward site generator. After developing Adobe Experience Manager customizations professionally for 5 years this feels nice and simple. When I was picking between the various blogging platforms I had a number of criteria: Minimal Set Up Full Control Over Design and Markup Minimal Cost (this quickly led me to static site generators) Markdown support Full Control over site structure I also looked at IndieWeb support.

So I finally took the time to set up https on my site. For some reason I thought it was going to be harder. Many thanks to the Let’s Encrypt guys for making this the most braindead simple process in the world. I feel bad for not having done it before. I guess I just expected it to be more involved. I’ve been trying to bite the bullet and actually complete things on my TODO list lately.

I decided a few weeks ago that it is time to remove Google Analytics from my site. I initially included it so that I could mess around with the service because I occasionally use it for work. Since then I haven’t used it at all and I realized that this is just one more source feeding the Google ad machine. No one visits my site now. They have no reason to, but I do want to start creating more content here.