My blog

When did this start?

I officially created my blog December 28th, 2021

I originally used EasyWP using WordPress through Namecheap

WordPress is a great way to get a site up and running with minimal effort, it really just becomes about hosting after that

I really wanted a way to just quickly get my ideas down and not have to think about the nuances of coding my own website (although I had already done that before)

How did you build this?

Now I use.. MY OWN CODE to make my website!

I must give a lot of credit to brandur for creating his own and making it open-source!!

I totally just took that, and rolled with it

I also did take great inspiration from Victor Zhou’s blog which looks very aesthetically pleasing and has tags (yoinked that feature for myself)

Features

This website has a lot of features that I am proud of, namely:

Tags (implemented that logic myself)
Search (Reversed engineered this from docfx)
Image preview using FancyBox
Quick article creation using make article
A basis on Markdown with my own HTML shortcuts built in!
Code blocks and copy to clipboard features
Auto-highlighting table of contents
CI/CD through Github Actions and integration with Azure 😎

I will probably make a dedicated video about each of these features above, as they are quite technical

Why did you decide to build-your-own?

Well I’m a developer by trade so writing Markdown felt much more natural to me now than editing in Wordpress

The WordPress way of doing things (too many buttons 🤮)

The Markdown way of doing things (so simplified 😇)

Also cost was a factor, here’s a breakdown of the cost of both ways

Feature	EasyWP	Markdown
Domain Name	$20	$20
Hosting	$50/year	Free! 🤩
Editing Experience	Editing in browser 🤮	Writing Markdown 😇
Search	Search was very basic and not responsive	Wicked fast search and super usable ⚡️
Configuration	Hard to configure / have to pay for certain plugins	Can change anything I want fairly straightforwardly
Learning	Don’t learn as much about how websites work and what is even available to change	I know this website inside and out now
Speed	Convenient / fast	Takes a while

Why did you start a blog?

I originally started because I wanted to make a programming tutorial, about how to build a docker image using windows nanoserver as base .

At the time, Windows pods were still pretty new, and it was pretty hard to find all the exact info out there about how to mount a configmap into one, on Windows.

I figured it out and just really wanted to make a cool blog such as ComputerHope (which, btw is from my hometown of Salt Lake City let’s go BABY! 🙌🏼)

You can even tell from ComputerHope that my color scheme is quite similar, I really liked that look and wanted my own site where I could put my ideas.

My first tutorial on this site!