Always Learning: Website Migration

The best way to learn how to do something is to try to do it.

I decided recently that I wanted to learn more about different static site generators, starting with Jekyll, a popular SSG. I selected the Minimal Mistakes theme and Github Pages for hosting and deployment.

I exported my existing content from Wordpress to an XML file, using the existing export tool in Wordpress. Then, I used Wordpress Export to Markdown on the command line to convert the XML content to separate Markdown files with YAML headers formatted appropriately for Jekyll to process the content.

I followed the instructions in the Minimal Mistakes Quick Start Guide to configure the top nav bar and to add front matter configurations to the main config file.

I will likely add different collections (I have one for poems, now), search, and a contact page later. I might add a CICD pipeline with tests. Once I am certain I have all of the content moved over from the Wordpress site, I will likely change the custom domain to this content and shut down the Wordpress site.

Why am I doing this? I have multiple reasons:

• It seems silly to pay for site hosting when I rarely update my site–and when I do, it’s usually posts, not interactive content.
• I wanted to see how site migration worked in this particular circumstance (Wordpress -> GitHub Pages using Jekyll engine).

• I want to test out different kinds of plugins and functionalities and be able to see how it all works (Wordpress with a theme obfuscates a lot of this).

  layout: single title: “Always Learning: Website Migration” date: “2023-01-01” categories:

  • “professional-development”

The best way to learn how to do something is to try to do it.

I decided recently that I wanted to learn more about different static site generators, starting with Jekyll, a popular SSG. I selected the Minimal Mistakes theme and Github Pages for hosting and deployment.

I exported my existing content from Wordpress to an XML file, using the existing export tool in Wordpress. Then, I used Wordpress Export to Markdown on the command line to convert the XML content to separate Markdown files with YAML headers formatted appropriately for Jekyll to process the content.

I followed the instructions in the Minimal Mistakes Quick Start Guide to configure the top nav bar and to add front matter configurations to the main config file.

I will likely add different collections (I have one for poems, now), search, and a contact page later. I might add a CICD pipeline with tests. Once I am certain I have all of the content moved over from the Wordpress site, I will likely change the custom domain to this content and shut down the Wordpress site.

Why am I doing this? I have multiple reasons:

• It seems silly to pay for site hosting when I rarely update my site–and when I do, it’s usually posts, not interactive content.
• I wanted to see how site migration worked in this particular circumstance (Wordpress -> GitHub Pages using Jekyll engine).
• I want to test out different kinds of plugins and functionalities and be able to see how it all works (Wordpress with a theme obfuscates a lot of this).

Check out my content at https://github.com/Angelles/angelles.github.io. Check out my content at https://github.com/Angelles/angelles.github.io.