I have been working on older Ionic Angular projects lately that can not be built with the latest version of Node.js. At first, it seemed like downgrading npm would suffice. When I realized that I would also need to downgrade my Node.js installation, I decided to bite the bullet and install NVM for Windows.
After successfully migrating the content from the old DasBlog site to the new DocPad based one, it was time to generate permanent redirects of old URLs to new ones. Since the site is going to be hosted in Azure, I decided to use the URL Rewrite module - rewrite maps to be exact; because I need to map a large number of individual URLs, which can't be covered by a generic rule.
In the scope of changing my blogging platform I also decided to switch from self-hosting the blog to hosting it in a Microsoft Azure web app. One of the available features, I want to take advantage of, is continuous deployment from a Git repository at one of the supported repository sites. Of course, the repository only contains the sources for the site, therefore it will need to be built every time the latest version is retrieved from the repository.
One of the most daunting parts of replacing my current blogging platform DasBlog by a site created with DocPad, is the migration of existing content. Being a software developer, I wanted to automate as much of the process as possible. Even if the total time required wouldn't be all that much shorter, I'd rather spend it writing scripts and learning new tools and technologies, than doing mundane tasks.
Npm packages need not only be written in JavaScript, they can also include native Node.js modules. Their sources need to be compiled when the package is installed on the local computer. Making that work in Windows can be a bit challenging.
Encouraged by Scott Hanselman's Get Involved video, I started experimenting with DocPad. Recently I wanted to perform a simple task of grouping a list of pages by the month, they were published in. In .NET I would use LINQ and be done with it in a matter of minutes. Doing this in my new technology stack took a bit more time.