Brand Refresh #
This week bitform.at got a major overhaul. It started with a desire to update the underlying Hugo Version from a very old v0.60 to a more recent v0.104.2.
This ended up being a perfect opportunity to do an entire refresh… of not just the underlying hugo engine, but the brand, the structure, some content, the build pipeline, everything!
Hugo Pipeline #
bitform.at is built, delivered, and hosted on AWS. The code is hosted and version controlled on GitHub. After each push to the deployment branch, AWS CodePipeline fetches the code and passes it along to AWS CodeBuild where I have a container image configured to build the static assets with Hugo. I
chose hugo a few years ago when I needed a better static site generator that could process assets like images. Prior to the switch to Hugo, I was having to do a lot of heavy lifting in order to leverage the full simplicify and speed of static sites by building image rendering and bitrate transcoding in order to simply take a photo and serve it quickly. The early versions of Hugo enabled me to do some of this, but the latest verisons of Hugo make it stupid simple!
Now, with Hugo, I can manage all of my image assets easily and have them processed for speed and performance so that I can get back to focusing on the content and let the framework handle the processing while keeping the infrastructure as lightweight as possible.
[Re]Building Muscle #
The process for building and delivering value is the value. -David Sulpy
While products are the prized value - because they’re how we experience value - the real value is actually in the process for delivering the product! Otherwise, things become old and stale and ultimately turn from value to debt.
So, ripping out an old framework and putting in a new one is actually a practice in building better process. If you had to tear down your entire house and rebuild it from the ground up every time you wanted to change a light, you’d either be constantly considering the value of your light “not worth it” or you’d be reconsidering your architecture so you can change lights more often, quicker. While this metaphore doesn’t represent all changes (changing a light bulb is not the same as putting in a new bathroom) it does demonstrate the need for ease of change for things that require updates. If something is not updatable within it’s planned cycle, it’s the wrong architecture.
Refresh and refactor often! You’ll craft a better value stream in the end.