Well, it’s working and I’m winning. I love winning.

Why am I winning? Well, I’m winning because I’ve successfully configured (although the configuration is VERY basic) my first distributed blog.

There are several reasons why it took me a while to come out of my “shell” and start a blog for the internet masses to view. I wanted a hosting medium where I have complete control. GitHub fulfilled my desires by providing Jekyll; and I’m sure time will show Jekyll will prove to be very useful to both myself and many others who have similar patterns of thinking.

I want to be a voice for liberty, freedom, and privacy. Starting a blog can be an excellent way write out your thoughts so that others can see them, understand them, and then agree with them or critique them.

GitHub, Jekyll is one of your best “features” yet. Keep working and adding new stuffs, you’re doing a great job!

What are the advantages of GitHub as a hosting provider?

As I thought about why I wanted to host my site using GitHub as the hosting provider I came up with a few reasons why:

  1. Hosting using Jekyll super simple. When I hosted my first Wordpress website the setup was not exactly intuitive. I have learned quite a bit more about networking than I knew at the time, so it might not be so difficult for me now. Regardless, it is EASY for you to start your own website with Jekyll. You can get started by reading about it here.

  2. Since your website/blog is hosting using GitHub it has the potential to be distributed and version controlled. You or anyone else can quickly and easily make copies of your site and add improvements using branching. Why would this prove useful? One obvious reason is for backups, but it’s also nice for testing and adding new improvements. If you don’t already know how to use git, you should really start learning how to use it.

  3. It’s transparent. Those companies and organizations that have public repositories on GitHub have “nothing to hide.” Why? Because if they did they would not be using a public repository! Not for profit organizations and governments who really care about openness should totally take advantage of GitHub as a provider for free web hosting.

What are some disadvantages of GitHub as a hosting provider?

  1. It’s transparent. If you do have “something to hide” there is not an easy way to hide it unless you use private (paid) repositories. There’s nothing wrong with privacy. In fact, the Fourth Amendment guarantees U.S. citizens the right to privacy. You want privacy? Pay GitHub money and get it. Their rates are totally reasonable for the service they provide.

  2. No support for certain types of server-side scripting. If you’re really into PHP you probably will not have a large appreciation that Jekyll doesn’t support it.

More to come!

Maffblaster