What I did recently:

http://eduncan911.com/blog

I copied a friend's wordpress theme (with permission) of almost the same design:

http://forgetfoo.com

"I want to know if this is relatively possible."

To answer your first concern, the answer will be great. This makes Jekyll so good for this kind of thing: it's just raw HTML and css and js in multiple directories. Place them wherever you want and start cutting into chunks, include some plugins, etc., and before you know it, you rake generate

and rake deploy

.

Octopress makes it even sweeter thanks to the large number of plugins already built in the blog template system *** (see below), as well as a set of default settings for all blogs.

The problem with the Octopress theme, as I said above, is purely setup as a blogging platform. You will need to change a lot, or in my case just completely ignore the template they have and just flip to the pretty Github pages, SCSS and plugins it comes in and roll your own html templates. It is really very simple.

Where to begin?

/source/index.html

You start here with this YAML file. At the top is the definition layout

that is used to select what "wrapper" or layout you want to wrap with this index.html content. To create a new template similar to yours, I would call it layout: fuse_homepage

. Then go to source/_layouts/

and create a new `fuse_homepage.html '.

Start with your theme and format the way you want

But look, you don't even need to do this. Hell, just paste your entire HTML home page to the right into this source/index.html

to begin with (be sure to keep the ---

YAML markers at the top, but get rid of the layout). Start with you and skip over something later when you're tired of having to deal with and insert headers and footers. Hell, just start there - create fuse_header.html and fuse_footer.html and just swap them for now.

Ignore the layout of the Octapress theme is only for hackers who don't do UX and just want to change the settings. Designers or people who like to manage their code will want to roll their own.

It's really flexible. However, you want to break it, you can. Want a new page, just call rake new_page["title"]

what all this does is create /title.html

or /title/index.html

, depending on your settings in the config file. But look, you don't even need to do this. Just create the file yourself - BAM, it will be copied during deployment.

Octopress complaints

Trying to get threads to place my bets, chasing rabbits

I only regret trying to follow Octopress's autographs after spending so much time and so disconnected in Octopress. In the end, I just ignored it and did mine. Much easier and I know where everyone is. I also need a nice and clean HTML formatted show that I care about my code. The default Octorpess theme and structure invite so many misplaced tabs and whitespace that it's just plain ugly. By doing your own, you are in complete control of space by spaces in space.

Import messages

There are tons of google links to help you export WRX from Wordpress and generate post files automatically. Be prepared to try a few different ones as they aren't all perfect.

import comments into Disqus

If you are already using Disqus in Wordpress, you will have a terrible time with this.

I can now claim to be a WRX / BlogML expert after nearly 100 import and export attempts and fixes etc. There is no documentation for any importer (Disqus or Wordpress) to tell you about the individual required fields. For example, Wordpress requires that it be wp:comment_id

installed and unique for every post you import, whereas Disqus requires a field wp:comment_email

, although let's say it's optional (it's BS, argh).

Get ready to crack the code. This is the hacker frame after

Note, however, there is a lot of work to do to hack a static site. Making your own template will save you so much time. You may also want to write your own plugins, which I did to get around bugs in the github repos for humans - it's pretty easy, but requires some coding.

I spent about a month and until I got my new blog / static site where I liked it to launch. Much more than I wanted, but it was "fun" to learn new languages ​​(Ruby, Python, installed Debian Linux in a virtual machine, because Windows just sucks at that).

If you're not ready to write that much, there are a few more static site generators I blogged about (hey, to show you my Octopress and custom theme!):

http://eduncan911.com/software/the-static-blog-boom.html

Btw, nice site ...