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+name = "buildablog"
+title = "Building My Own SSG"
+host_url = "https://github.com/BrandonIrizarry/buildablog"
+synopsis = "The SSG used to build this site."
+stack = ["Go", "HTML", "CSS"]
+thumbnail = "assets/github-white.svg"
+date = 2026-03-01
++++
+
+# Motivation
+
+While looking for options to host my blog, and having tried Hugo and
+Eleventy, I decided to write my own SSG.
+
+I had completed the [Build a Static Site Generator in Python](https://www.boot.dev/courses/build-static-site-generator-python)
+course on boot.dev, and so already had some inkling of what's involved
+here. That course requires the learner to manually parse Markdown into
+HTML; in my project (which uses Go for the backend), Markdown parsing
+is forwarded over to the [frontmatter](https://github.com/adrg/frontmatter) and [goldmark](https://github.com/yuin/goldmark) libraries
+(with help from the [goldmark-highlighting](https://github.com/yuin/goldmark-highlighting/v2) extension library for
+prettifying code listings.)
+
+Basically, writing my own SSG from scratch felt like it was going to
+be at most not that much harder than learning the ins and outs of
+configuring an existing SSG like Hugo or Eleventy. It would also in
+the end allow me to configure my site at the atomic level, so to
+speak - I write and maintain the server endpoints, the HTML Go
+templates, the CSS styling, you get the idea.
+
+Using Go templates can be daunting at first, but Section 4.6 of of
+*The Go Programming Language* — Text and HTML Templates — helps. Jon
+Calhoun has a good [mini course](https://www.calhoun.io/intro-to-templates/) on templates, which I had already
+completed in its entirety when I needed knowledge of templates for a
+previous project I completed, called [Juices](https://github.com/BrandonIrizarry/Juices). Another thing I
+learned while working on my SSG is that template parsing should not be
+done when serving an endpoint, since this creates a significant
+performance bottleneck.
+
+Generics also came in handy when I wanted to reuse the exact same code
+for differing frontmatter layouts (e.g., project posts like this one,
+versus ordinary blog posts.)
+
+# RSS
+
+Setting up RSS for my site (once you know the tricks) turns out to be
+surprisingly straightforward, especially with Go's ability to marshal
+all things structured (XML, TOML, JSON, etc.) to and from itself. At
+one point I was torn between using either Atom or RSS for my feed,
+since the former is [touted](https://nullprogram.com/blog/2013/09/23/) as strictly superior to the latter; in
+the end I decided that RSS is good enough to get things started for
+now.
+
+I did face a last-minute curveball when I realized I had to integrate
+the *projects* listing to the RSS feed. To this end, I needed a
+reliable way to sort RSS item fields by date, which necessitated some
+beefing up of the rss package itself.
+
+Two notable resources for learning about interfacing RSS with Go code
+are:
+
+1. [Create an RSS Feed (WikiHow)](https://www.wikihow.com/Create-an-RSS-Feed)  
+   Super helpful for getting the details of the layout right.
+
+2. [Build Your Own RSS Feed Generator in Go (YouTube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2E1JpC38Pg )  
+   Helpful for understanding the gory details of what the acutal
+   marshalling logic looks like.
+
+With regard to RSS, I feel *all* blogs should have an RSS/Atom
+feed. There are some fantastic ones out there that don't!
+
+When setting up RSS, I finally grokked something while reading a [blog
+post](https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/) by Cory Doctorow where he advocates for RSS:
+
+I realized that **RSS is a genre of social media.**
+
+# Sources of Inspiration
+
+I took (and continue to take) inspiration from blogs I've seen in the
+wild, such as:
+
+1. <https://maurycyz.com/>  
+
+   I ripped off a lot of CSS (and general design decisions) from this
+   site. 😁 The great thing about this site is that it proves that you
+   can be both a highly intelligent and original thinker without being
+   a techie conformist or all-around hipster with regard to things
+   like site aesthetic, opinions, and so on. Such concerns create
+   performance anxiety which get in the way of you actually making
+   something *good*.  
+   
+   As a shout out, the author even gives some quick lessons on setting
+   up a blog and writing the HTML and CSS for a simple website (which
+   I also took pointers from! This guy probably did a better job of
+   explaining what `width: 100%;` means than a lot of resources I've
+   seen online.)
+
+2. <https://nullprogram.com/>  
+
+   For pointers on how to establish a convention for blog post
+   slugs. This author uses the date-based scheme, which I adopted in
+   the end.
+
+3. <https://elly.town/>  
+
+   For general compactness of aesthetic. While I don't plan on going
+   that route, the nod to S-expression syntax is nice.
+
+