To further reduce my hosting costs (which were already quite low), I decided to move away from WordPress (which requires a relatively expensive database backend) and move to a flat-file system—specifically, Grav .
Benefits:
- Does away with the database and the costs that incurred.
- Makes backups and edits easier because everything is right there in the file system.
- Gets rid of the quadrillion bots that hit every WordPress installation looking for weaknesses (which were also increasing my hosting costs).
Drawbacks:
- Old links are no longer valid. This is a big bummer, but there’s no easy way to fix this. The URL isn’t changing, so you’ll still come to my site, but you’ll get a 404 error. You just need to use the search bar to find the article you came for.
- No more comments (but very few people commented anyway).
- A few other technical things that don’t really affect users.
I still like the minimalistic look, and I may still do some more tweaking, but overall I’m happy with it. This blog is more for my own records than anything else. Only family and close friends ever look at this site anyway :) I hope you enjoy. Eventually I’ll get a contact form up. Otherwise, use any of the social media links in the sidebar to contact me and provide any feedback.
Thanks for reading!