Blogging questions

What does blogging mean to you? How do you do it? I hope this post helps you understand both a bit better or give you some ideas for your own blog.

This started as a chain-blog-post, and I usually abhor tagging people in chain letters and the like. But, I liked reading Melanie Richards' blogging questions and decided to accept her generalized tag.

Why did you start blogging in the first place? #

If we're talking about the old days when blogging started, I suppose I just wanted to try out this new thing everyone was talking about. It was on blogspot and super cringe, and I'm glad it finally died a timeout death last year.

If we're talking about my modern blogs (I can't just have one), then I think my primary reason for blogging is to help other people who might have the same problem. Sometimes that other person is me in 6 months when I forgot how I solved a problem.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? #

I use 11ty as my static site generator because it's fast and uses JavaScript (Node) to build so I don't have to context-switch between frontend JavaScript and, say, Ruby like with Jekyll. I also love the community and now organize the 11ty Meetup.

For hosting, I use Cloudflare Pages. I might switch to Cloudflare Workers if they deprecate Pages. I like Cloudflare because I can block AI bots and scrapers rather than asking them to kindly obey a robots.txt. I wrote about the migration in Migrating from Netlify to Cloudflare for AI bot protection. I still use Netlify for other sites where I'm not as worried about the content being stolen, especially if they need a contact form. Netlify is super handy for small-volume forms.

For images, I use Cloudinary. This is a step further than what most people do, but I like the convenience of the auto-format detection feature so that my markup can be simpler. You can read more about it in Optimize Images in Eleventy Using Cloudinary. Other people accomplish this directly in their codebase using the 11ty-image plugin. I also use Cloudinary to create dynamic social share images, which I also wrote up in Dynamic social share images using Cloudinary.

Have you blogged on other platforms before? #

Yes, the aforementioned BlogSpot/Blogger cringefest. Then I briefly had a Jekyll blog for about 3 posts then gave up because I kept forgetting how to add a new post.

I also briefly wrote on Medium exclusively before creating this blog with 11ty. I used to syndicate to other platforms like Medium and DEV, but I no longer do that now. I prefer my traffic come directly to me so that they can see what else I have to offer.

I do have RSS set up though.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog? #

I write directly in VS Code using Markdown. I like the simplicity of Markdown even over a rich text editor. I also like that I can get fancy within a Markdown file and write HTML or even Nunjucks code directly inside it, and it will still work.

When do you feel most inspired to write? #

I feel most inspired to write when I've just solved a really difficult problem or I've been mulling over some question in my head. Or even when I'm frustrated that I can't find other content easily that answers the same question.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft? #

I publish immediately after. If I wait, it usually doesn't get published. That's probably because I never finished the post to my satisfaction, then years later I will delete the incomplete draft so that I stop seeing it when I run git status.

What are you generally interested in writing about? #

Honestly, everything. Here, it's mostly about web performance and web development. However, I also have an art blog and a personal blog. I also write a newsletter here and for other websites I manage like NC Art Meets and Theme Vitals.

Who are you writing for? #

For that random person on the internet trying to answer that question I'm answering. Or, like I said, me in 6 months.

What’s your favorite post on your blog? #

Probably How to build a website in 2021. It's actually evergreen.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature? #

Oh god no please don't encourage another redesign! 😅 I recently finished a redesign so definitely not doing that again anytime soon. I do want to add structured data schema though as covered in a recent 11ty meetup episode.

Tag ‘em. #

As I said, I abhor directly subjecting people to a tag, so my request is more general - if you haven't yet written about why you blog and you would like to, then please consider yourself tagged.

Cover photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

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