Hexo Review

Has been only two days since I’ve used Hexo, but I found several pros and cons that people might find interesting.

Pro

• Super easy & Fast deployment
  All you need to do is write up your markdown files, and type single command

  $hexo deploy -g

And that’ll deploy it to your Github Pages :)

• Customizable themes
  You can get Hexo themes easily and customize it your way!
  It was my first time seeing .ejs files and .styl files, but hey, it was easy to customize it the way I want.
  For example, I switched the top banner image to text. I’m thinking of creating my own theme later too!

Con

• HTML files are generated EVERY TIME you deploy
  This means the more markdown files you have, more files you’ll be re-deploying. So far I’m not sure how much this is going to affect the deployment process, but I’m just a bit hesitant over its performance when the files pile up.

• Can’t see which file was updated / added in Github repository
  Since ALL files are re-deployed, you can’t see which one has changed from former commit. All resource files will be renewed, including the files that have not changed.

• If you lose local files (markdowns), you won’t be able to recocver them.
  You’ll have to diligently back-up your markdown files and customized files. I’m still looking for a solution for this, but as long as I know there is no way to recover your markdown files if you lose them. This means your site won’t be deployable again, because if you deploy your site with empty posts, your site will also be synch’ed to an empty website.

I find this a huge bummer, and it concerns me a lot. I have my own TIL repository which I keep my bits of daily TIL’s, but also thinking of back-up mechanism for my whole hexo directory.
(Please give me advice on this if you know how to overcome it in a sustainable way!)