A few months ago I decided to move my personal site and blog from a WordPress platform to Octopress framework.

OctoPress is a blogging framework based on Jekyll that generates static files and can be managed completely from the command line.

I made the switch for a number of reasons:

• A full WordPress site was overkill for the simple site/blog setup I was using it for.
• I've started using MarkDown for most of my writing and the idea of being able to write my blog posts using it was appealing.
• I've always enjoyed working from the command line whenever I could and with Octopress I can manage the entire site with VIM and the command line.
• Since Octopress generates static html it loads fast, has far fewer security issues, and can be hosted on just about anything. In fact this site is being hosted on GitHub Pages.
• I was just curious about Octopress after hearing it mentioned over the last few years and this seems like as good a time as any to give it a try.

I haven't spent much time exploring all of the possibilities with Octopress but so far I've been impressed with how easy everything is to use and configure.

I still use WordPress for most of the sites that I manage but I think Octopress can be a very powerfull/usefull alternative in certain situations.

Check out this great tutorial on how to setup Octopress.