Hello from Leaflet

I’ve run my personal blog through a static site generator for as long as I can remember. I've used many: Jekyll, Hugo, Zola, Eleventy, and now one I wrote by hand as a holiday break project.

As someone who appreciates and prefers simplicity, you can't get much simpler than a bundle of files I can upload to whatever CDN I prefer, at least in terms of "how much infrastructure is involved in delivering my website".

But, the ceremony of needing to publish from my laptop is not simple. Arguably this is the side of simplicity that matters more in the long run. Usability is important.

I'm hypothesizing that not having a good workflow for mobile drafting and publishing has kept me back from writing more. Sure, there are undoubtedly other reasons, but every bit counts right?

Betting on the atmosphere

That aside, Leaflet is awesome. It speaks to my minimalist tendencies, provides a great mobile drafting experience, and is at the center of the atmosphere where I’m spending more and more of my tech interest energy these days.

Data portability for any future changes is also a bonus. Part of the appeal of static sites is I know the content is entirely under my control. With Leaflet, knowing all the data is stored safely in my PDS, not locked behind any provider walls, is a nice peace of mind.

Migrating old content

I don’t love the idea of having a split between my old stuff and the new stuff, so I plan to migrate my old content over to Leaflet too.

Thankfully ATProto makes this simple. I have some light translation to do from markdown to the Leaflet block lexicons, but otherwise it’s just a matter of putting the right records in my PDS.

Since my Leaflet blog will be at a different host than my static site (notes.seth.computer, previously seth.computer/notes) I’ll have some redirects to set up. Ditto for the RSS URL.

Aesthetically I like the original setup better, but oh well. Tradeoffs all around right? I’m typically fighting perfectionism so I’ll treat this as an exercise.

One Leaflet request

I would love if Leaflet had support for dark themes. I switch between light and dark mode on my devices pretty frequently, and enjoy having that support on my own website. Adding support for dark mode themes on publications would be awesome.

Then again, this is all open source. Maybe I'll take a stab at it.