Custom Blog Refresh Using Caffeine, Less.js & Disqus

So, prior to today I had been using the same design since 2007. It's currently June 2012, so that's a solid 5 years with the same old design, hosted on the same old platform. Definitely time for a refresh.

Right now I'm still slammed with other pressing commitments (read: client work and QuoteRobot), so rather than doing nothing about my blog, I rolled a very fast, lightweight, custom design and architecture in about a day. I'll be adding a portfolio and probably some further design enhancements in the coming months.

Technology Stack For A Quick Custom Blog

As a way to introduce my new custom blog, I thought I'd chat about the technologies used. Feel free to discuss any of them, I'm happy to talk further about why I chose each.

• Caffeine Framework - Full disclosure, Caffeine has been a labour of love between Gavin and I for some 6 years now (although mostly Gavin). You can download it on GitHub - Caffeine, along with the blog module - Caffeine Blog Module. It provides a lightweight base to build a web site or application, extendable by modules, events, and triggers.
  
• Less.js - Less CSS is an awesome pre-parser for CSS. Since this site is pretty lightweight, I'm actually just pre-parsing the .less files at runtime. Less allows me to nest CSS selectors, use variables in CSS, and comes with some nice mix-ins I'm using for columns and grid layout. I highly recommend you try it - Less CSS.
• Disqus - Instead of rolling my own comments with spam protection and moderation, I opted to use Disqus. It's really robust, and even allows me to have little comment counters for each post with a javascript snippet.

Please let me know what you think of the new design and stack I used to build it. Thanks a ton for visiting, and feel free to follow me on Twitter.