Is it time for PicsOfBread 3.0?

The answer is... maybe?

So, for some background, I've been working particularly hard on some of the non-bread projects lately (mostly some ChromeOS stuff, and some RPG Maker stuff too), so the "stuff" page has been getting updated a LOT.

Oh wait, never mind!

Oh wait, never mind! I forgot how broken this repository is.

So, the mistakes.

Well, mostly it's my fault. Netlify's a great project. The primary issue is actually the way I laid out the repository for the site. You see, PicsOfBread 2.0 (which is what I've just now decided to call the current iteration of the site) runs on Hugo, which is a pretty decent static site generator (if you set it up properly). I didn't set it up properly.

Hugo is intended to be used on it's own, with a theme in a subdirectory, with builds done with the hugo command. Making pages is hugo new. Everything goes through that hugo command. Netlify has perfect support for this.

SO HOW DID I MANAGE TO SETTLE ON BUILDING THE SITE WITH NPM!?!?

Seriously. I will never know. 2019 me was on some kind of crack I guess. This is NOT the right way to build a Hugo site. It means (like it did this week) that builds will just start failing. Package locks get stale. Packages go out of date. Your NPM version is 8 for some reason. Oh right, that's what's in my .nvmrc. WHY IS THAT IN MY .NVMRC? When did I put that there? Did the pulp developers put that there? Did this solve some sort of problem that I apparently knew existed at some point in 2019, so I used it and said future me would fix it? Well future me found it, he fixed it, and he's not happy about it.

What's your point, then?

My point is that I think this is a good excuse opportunity to replace and revamp PicsOfBread.com. Like a PicsOfBread 3.0 (again, this is the first and likely the last time I refer to the site having a version number). So here's the things I need in a new site (that I'm probably going to start working on and then put off forever):

  1. Needs to still work with Netlify. Netlify's awesome, actually. I've been really happy with them, and I've actually considered buying a pro plan before. Do recommend.
  2. Preferably dead simple. I want minimal moving parts. Part of what makes this site kind of a slog is that it takes a while to fix or modify ANYTHING major. It's a big, complicated codebase (at least for my needs)
  3. Support for both blog posts and pages (like the current site)
  4. GitHub-flavoured markdown. I really don't want to convert the existing pages on 2.0 to another markup language. Plus, I know markdown and it's easy to read. BUT! I wish Hugo's markdown had some of the extra stuff GitHub's markdown had, and I want to be able to write the same markdown here that I do in my repositories on GitHub.

Honestly, at this point, I'm thinking of writing my own simple set of static site scripts (probably in Ruby) that does just what I need and literally nothing more. The site would be the generator, basically.

Why not just refactor the existing site into the "proper" Hugo structure or whatever?

While that would solve the maintenance problems I've been having, it would still be WAY too complicated for my needs. There's a lot going on that doesn't really need to be there for what I'm doing.

Therefore?

Well, dear reader (me), I think you're probably gonna be seeing some changes to the site soon. Dunno when, but soon.

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