Five years of this blog.
On the 9th August 2019, I uploaded my first blog post (it was about the Sega Saturn, which is still an amazing machine by the way). This marks five years of running this blog. Where did the time go?
I wanted to share some thoughts on blogging, what my popular posts are, and other interesting tidbits I’ve learnt over the years after writing over 120 posts (I can’t believe that I’ve written that many).
What are my most popular posts?
According to Vercel, there are two posts that stand out as the most popular:
I’m not sure why these posts are popular, possibly due to their search engine optimisation? Whatever the reason, these two posts get a lot of attention each month.
What is the most common platform that is used to view my blog?
Looking at data provided by Vercel, desktop is by far the most popular platform when it comes to viewing my blog. There are mobile platforms (with Android being the most popular in terms of visitors), but Android and iOS combined don’t come close to desktop platforms. Windows is the biggest, followed by MacOS and there a few visitors who use Linux.
I’m not surprised that desktop is the most popular platform, as I tend to post about my blog on LinkedIn and most visitors have a search engine referral who look at the popular posts mentioned above. I’ve slowly started to share the posts on Threads as well and see if that increases the number of mobile viewers.
The evolution of this blog, through the years
This blog has gone through some changes over the years:
- The original was two separate websites (yes, really). The main website was using a CSS framework (which I cannot remember the name, probably for the best), and the blog was using Jekyll. I ran this for roughly seven months before switching to the next version.
- The next version was launched in April 2020, and it was using Gatsby. Pretty big moment as the blog and personal website was running in one place. This was my first time using a JS framework like this so I was proud of myself. But over the years I grew frustrated with Gatsby. So I decided to start again in 2023 with my newest version.
- The latest and greatest version uses NextJS as the framework and is hosted on Vercel. This version used a more simpler design, with a focus on readability and speed. I’m happy with NextJS and the current design at the moment, so I’m not going to make any changes to it for the time being.
What I’ve learnt in maintaining this blog
One of the key things I’ve learnt in maintaining this blog is design. At one stage I had plenty of animations on the website. From the header, to the footer, I had a smooth fade in animation because I thought I was cool. But in retrospect, those animations didn’t bring any value. I also had several fonts, which meant a user would have more to load, now I use one font family (RedditSans). I also had an odd colour scheme and tried to have an image, a subtitle, date posted and a title for each post on the blog page. It was honestly chaotic looking back on it.
Designing for mobiles by default was also something I’ve learnt. I guess I’m somewhat old school when I prefer to interact with websites on larger displays (whether it’s via my iPad or my desktop PC). However, as I look to upgrading my phone (currently using an iPhone XS for six years, the battery life is awful), I’ll more than likely be ending up with a phone that has a much larger display as that’s where the industry is heading. So maybe I’ll end up interacting with websites more after I upgrade?
Frameworks is something else I’ve learnt over the years. I’ve now had some more experience in working with React and NextJS (yes, it is based on React) and have gotten comfortable with the basics. There’s still plenty to learn which is something I want to do (and I want to learn another framework like Svelte.)
Improving my writing is an activity that gets better with time, and I think after 120 posts, my writing has improved but I feel it could still get better. I have plenty of posts that are in progress that I’m slowly working on and are hoping to share in the coming months.
Blogging as a hobby
Over the years, blogging has definitely grown on me as one of my favourites hobbies. I enjoy writing and creating content, and the fact that I have full control over this platform is amazing.
I’ve found that I’ve always wanted to make time for blogging, and never viewed it as a chore. Writing is something that has grown on me, even before I go to sleep I sometimes write a few paragraphs to posts I have in progress or new posts.
I find writing these posts to be relaxing, I find writing is a good way to clear my head after work or just spending some time during the weekend. Plus, I find writing fun.
This video by Eric Murphy is great in explaining that personal websites shouldn’t be just professional stuff, it should show off your personality and what interests you. It’s something I want to improve going forward.
What’s next?
More casual posts.
A lot of my posts have been more professional or based on IT. But more recently I wanted to try and write posts that are more fun to read and write. I enjoy writing posts about IT, programming etc but I want to branch out and talk about parts of my life, share photos of my travels, video games, and so on. The ‘end of year’ posts I do are a good example of more casual posts but I definitely want to write more.
Return to programming posts.
I haven’t been writing as many programming related posts recently, it’s something that I want to improve. Hoping to write a few more programming related posts this year about JavaScript/TypeScript.
A few design tweaks and new pages
I want to add a few more pages to this website. I’m thinking of adding a page on what I currently use for my devices, software, etc. I want to make some more changes to make this website more personal.
Thank you
This website has gotten me interviews, job offers and a small audience who read this blog. So thank you for reading these posts.
Don’t forget that you can subscribe via email to these posts (check out the form below or on the blog page) to receive future posts in your inbox for free! Alternatively, there is an RSS feed if you prefer to use an RSS reader. I’m also active on Threads if you want to follow me on there (fediverse sharing is now active). You can also add me on LinkedIn if you want, just add a message that you found my website.
Thanks again for reading and here’s to another five years of blog posts.
