First Post - Why Blog

I have wanted to start a blog for more than 2 years, but procrastination and (mild) perfectionism got the best of me. This very post was actually filled with lorem ipsum until today (2023-10-30). I have finally bit the bullet and started writing my first post. Yay! But let’s rewind and explore why I wanted to start a blog or personal website in the first place.

The beauty of the World Wide Web is that anyone can start a website and share their thoughts with the world. A personal website allows me to carve out a little corner of the web that is entirely my own, to develop my interests and talents, and to connect with people anywhere in the world who happen to stumble upon my blog posts.

For example, I find this blog (Mandarin) highly inspiring and enjoyable.

I love learning, exploring, and traveling. This blog will serve as a platform where I can document my recent learning experiences, share my explorations, and recount my travels. Some of the blogs that I find inspiring and hope to emulate include this one, this one (Mandarin), and this one (Mandarin).

It’s often said that the best way to learn is to teach, so I plan to write some explanatory articles in the future.

Blogging is also a great way to build an online presence. I can write about my projects and explainer articles to showcase my technical abilities and give recruiters and potential employers a place to view my work. As technical communication is important in the software industry, this blog can be a place for me to practice and leave an online trail. This will be similar to a designer’s portfolio but for a software engineer and an aspiring digital nomad.

I first learned about Hugo from a blog I read. I later learned that it’s packed with many attractive features:

  • fast: it takes seconds to build a static website and it’s extremely fast to load too.
  • markdown support: I can focus on writing instead of formatting.
  • multilingual: I would like to run the blog in both English and Mandarin. I will start simple with just English for now.
  • RSS support: I’m a big supporter of RSS so I want my blog to support it as well.

Since this website will mainly consist of blog posts, I think using GitHub Pages to host my website is a pretty good hosting solution. It’s simple and free. I didn’t consider using CMS like WordPress because, from my personal experience, they are often a bit slow to load.

I hope this is a lifetime project that I will constantly work on and keep updating. I will use the tag blog for posts about the blog itself. Let’s see how it goes!

Here are some of the improvements I want off the top of my head:

  • add comment systems
  • add Mandarin
  • add RSS