The Small Things: Polish Features That Make a Jekyll Blog Feel Professional

By Michael McGarrah · April 29, 20268 min read

Dark mode, print stylesheets, haiku error pages, author bios, and the archive page — none of these are glamorous features. Each one took less than a day. Together they're the difference between a blog that looks like a default template and one that feels like someone cares about it.

VS Code Markdown Preview: Closing the macOS vs Windows Context Menu Gap

By Michael McGarrah · April 28, 20264 min read

On macOS, VS Code's right-click context menu gives you 'Open Preview' for Markdown files. On Windows and WSL2, you only get 'Open With...' and an extra click. Here's how to close that gap.

Jekyll Content Plumbing: Permalinks, Reading Time, Excerpts, and Redirects

By Michael McGarrah · April 27, 202611 min read

The invisible infrastructure behind a Jekyll blog — how permalink structure, reading time estimates, custom excerpt separators, pagination, and redirect handling all work together. These aren't glamorous features, but getting them wrong breaks SEO, confuses readers, and creates maintenance headaches.

QuickSight Vanity URLs: Serverless Edge Redirects with Terraform and CloudFront

By Michael McGarrah · April 25, 202612 min read

In a large enterprise, 'Where do I log in?' is a surprisingly expensive question. I built a serverless redirect engine for AWS QuickSight that eliminates login friction, costs under six cents a month, and has run in production for over a year with zero maintenance.