Why nanoc?
nanoc is what is known as a static web page generator. What does that mean? It means that nanoc creates pages for serving to web browsers whose page content never changes. Tools like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal to name a few serve dynamic content meaning that the web page is created upon each request by a web browser. There are a lot of static site generators including the original, time consuming craft-every-page-by-hand-coding-it method.
So why did I choose nanoc? 1) it is written in the ruby language, 2) it is very customizable. I had originally started writing my own static generator, but given that I wanted to start journaling soonest, I soon began researching static blog generators. Why ruby, because I wanted to familiarize myself with the language and its libraries. I tested many tools, choosing nanoc in the end because I came to realize that what I wanted was a content management system not just a blog although the creator of nanoc states that it is the file system which does the content managing and not nanoc. nanoc is minimalist and very usable out-of-the-box, but it’s true value lies in the ease with which one can customize its behavior.
I have learned a great deal about ruby in the process of learning to unleash the potential of nanoc to be moulded to my needs, so thank you Denis Defreyne and the nanoc community.