It all started with the idea that I want a place on the web to publish something of my own. Not long ago I had discussed with a colleague about static site generators and how they compare with content management systems. One conclusion was that for relatively simple sites whose appearance do not depend on the user, a statically generated site could be superior. The well-known benefits include need for a simpler infrastructure, and faster page load times.

Based on some browsing I decided Jekyll is the leading open-source solution in this space and ran it locally. I had Ruby installed beforehand so the installation was basically one command. Jekyll installed and runs nicely on Windows whereas many other Ruby Gems I’ve seen haven’t installed like a snap.

Then I did some modifications to the html and css and searched for a smooth process to upload the site to S3. Project s3_website developed by a fellow Finn seemed to do just what I was looking for. I created a bucket and setup access policy according to the instructions and was able to publish the first draft of this blog.

Amazon started selling domain names last summer so I bought it from them. When browsing available domain names I could see how many were reserved by spammers who try sell them forward. I am a proponent of free competition but those guys could be regulated.