For quite some time now I've been unhappy with Gutenberg in WordPress, and its constantly changing functionality. This breaks websites and doesn't look professional, not even for a personal blog. I've been using WordPress since the very first version of this site back in 2007 (Wayback Machine link), and I've been part of the community for just as long: I contributed to Support, Docs, Hosting and Core, and had a lot of fun at WordCamp EU & NL. So this was not an easy decision to make.
In 2024 I moved Sysadmins of the North from WordPress to Statiq, a .NET static site generator. Exporting WordPress, converting the posts to Markdown and some regular expression work got me there, and the migration was a chance to rewrite and update older posts.
Update 2026: I moved Sysadmins of the North back to WordPress. Having your site statically generated makes writing posts a more daunting task. You no longer "just edit", you edit a .md file, have your SSG convert it into a post and you upload it to your webhost using (for example) FTPs. Of you have to set up Github tasks and actions, if that's your cup of tea.
On June 1, 2024 I asked @WordPress on X how they liked the state of code blocks on my site, now that I wasn't using a syntax highlighting plugin anymore. I linked half a dozen examples, and my verdict was short: it is one big mess! 😠
And now? .NET!
I've worked at a Windows Server and IIS based hosting company for nearly twenty years, and now for a Windows Server and .NET oriented software company. I've always liked (ASP).NET Framework. Therefore I considered either Piranha CMS or Umbraco as the CMS to migrate to. Or a Static Site Generator (SSG) like Statiq. The only downside: programming websites is not my job or area of expertise, it just has to work, so I'll have to go with what a CMS has to offer. Especially with .NET...
After a brief test period (I've used Umbraco and Piranha CMS before), I went with Statiq as Static Site Generator. Getting my WordPress posts into it was relatively easy:
- create a complete WordPress export
- convert posts to Markdown following DAEXT's Convert WordPress Articles to Markdown post
- regexp your way through all
.mdfiles using Visual Studio Code and Notepad++. Why doesn't Code recognize^\[(\!\[)(.*)(\])(\(.*)(\))\](\((.*)\))$as a valid regular expression? Anyway, my replacement was:$1$2$3\($7 "$2"\). This is for optimizing images in posts. - run Statiq.Web and generate static HTML files
- upload files and assets to the webhost
- now for some fine-tuning
Not my first migration away from WordPress: years ago I described how to export and migrate WordPress to Ghost. And if you do go with Piranha CMS, here is how to extend TinyMCE in Piranha CMS.
Saotn.org in the near future
Migrating to a different CMS and platform means I have the opportunity to optimize, rewrite and update older posts. While doing that (a process that may take many months - there are almost 300 posts and a lot of images) I won't be publishing new posts, unless I have something really, really, reeaally interesting to mention.