This site has now been automated! By which I mean the deployment of this site is now automated. What does this mean? This means that every time I push changes to a private GitHub repo, the site will build and deploy using CircleCi.

I’d been putting this particular task off pretty much since I started using Jekyll. Why? Because I thought it would be a pain to set up. And sure enough: this was a pain in the butt to set up.

That said, it does make my life a lot easier:

  1. No more risky FTPing.
  2. I can push and have it build on my laptop at work without having to worry about using a phone tether to get around company firewalls on the guest network (#contractorlife). [EDIT: Dear current and future employers: This is only so I can write posts while I’m on my lunch break, never on company time, of course.]
  3. I can be extra lazy.
  4. I can use my iPad alongside WorkingCopy and now not only write, but publish fro there.

Obviously items (2) and (4) are the biggest wins, and item (4) especially, given my happy new writing set up for my regular writing stuff (I’m now using a convoluted git workflow which is convoluted but makes me pretty happy), about which I will write a post… soon.

Anyway, it’s pretty neat.

One thing I will say is that the hardest thing to figure out about all of this was the whole rsync thing. You see, Jekyll provided some pretty good instructions for CircleCi, but given version 2, the examples were all AWS stuff, and I’m still boycotting Amazon as much as possible (and yes: I do realize that a lot of the services I use are still hosted on AWS… but I do not typically pay for said services as much as possible). I’d gone with CircleCi originally because it was, you know, free. But trying to do that with RSYNC having also not a ton of experience with SSH, well… let’s just say I’ve learned a lot of things.

If there is any interest in the actual setup or how to do it, backchannel me on Twitter or something and maybe I’ll write up a thing. That said, I am not ready to foray into the wider world of blogs-as-instruction, so, you know, not going to do that just because.

Anyway, this post was provided by said automation, and isn’t that neat?

Happy Monday, y’all.