Grav did me proud for 5 years. I’m glad that I played with it, and I learned an awful lot about content management systems. However, I think it’s time to move on.
Grav is a “flat file” CMS. That means there’s no database at the back end holding all the metadata. It’s just plain files. This is a dream come true for anyone who wants portability of their website. To move Grav, all you need to do is zip up the folder and unzip it in the new location. Because of that, I’ve moved this website four times, from a RasPi, to a NAS Box, then to a Debian 10 VPS, and then over to a Debian 12 VPS. I didn’t think I’d need anything else.
I shied away from WordPress because I didn’t want the hassle of running MySQL in the background. Plus WordPress just felt “stuffy” and a bit formulaic. I’ve got nothing against MySQL, honestly, it’s actually been one of the most stable pieces of software I’ve ever had to manage. But it’s a database, and databases can get corrupted, which is just too much headache. As for the stuffiness…. WordPress has come quite a way since I last properly played with it. Some of the themes are really nice, and the new editing UI is a lot more intuitive.
Grav, despite being an impressive piece of code, is still pretty raw and there are parts of it which feel very ‘fragile’. adding a plugin, or changing some metadata to solve a problem, it’s not long before you’re having to read through chunks of Python in order to try and debug why something’s not working. The vanilla install is great, and the most used plugins are pretty sweet, but things get hairy once you leave the beaten path. Also, the tools just aren’t there for making it an easy-to-use every-day blogging system. I fudged my own using a page-editor and a hidden link, but it was hard to upload images.
For a static website, or one where you don’t mind logging into the admin console to publish articles, Grav is pretty solid. But I’m usually out and about with only the phone, and I just want to take a photo and upload it, or quickly write a blog post. WordPress has an app for all that.
So, I’ve taken the plunge and migrated the whole site over. It’s only taken a day, and I’m pretty much back to where I was. I’ve found a nice Theme, and I’ve customised a few of the pages. I’m impressed.