Blog Redesign and Content Variety
On and off, I always had a blog for the last 15 years. It started on Blogspot, then moved to Live Spaces, then after a bit of an experiment with Wordpress, I finally decided Jekyll is my taste. It took me some time to understand the workings of Jekyll, but as a developer, it gives me much more control over my blog, compared to other tools. It's based on markdown and everything is driven through source control and CI/CD, satisfying my inner developer.
(While I can, let me say what a waste of my time Wordpress was. In the history of software, no one actually made WYSIWYG editors work as desired, and Wordpress is one giant pile of complications sewn together with good ideas and bad coding.)
Even though I always had a website, I was never a proper blogger. I never had the habit of writing; I'm still struggling with it. It has many reasons but probably the biggest one of all is my laziness. Recently, I'm focusing on it to break that habit, with some success. But regardless of my steadiness or the content quality, I'm always obsessed with the design of the website. I think probably at some level it represents me, that's why I'm so invested in the design and the code behind it.
But recently I came to a realisation: I always defined myself as a developer, a complete software guy. Representing it, my blog always had the main theme of software (with some irrelevant humour also involved) and lately, it kind of started to bother me. It's probably because I found some other interests that I enjoy as much as software development (maybe even more), so I decided to make a few changes on the website.
I no longer define myself just as a software guy, so my website won't have that as the main theme anymore. Balancing it, it'll cover many aspects of my life, it'll cover *me*. I already started making those changes: Software posts are no longer ruling the home page. You can see my photography skills, albeit not great, found their place over there. Right now, I'm only adding what I captured using my iPhone, without any touch or filter. It feels like an honest start and will help me find my format and website design with baby steps.
I'll also be adding some content around my other interest: Creative writing. Over the years, I've had many ideas about fantasy fiction but never actually written any real piece. Lately, I've been taking some courses, last one at Faber Academy, and I have been writing a few small pieces. I'm thinking about publishing them on the website, as well as my writing process, my feelings, and experiences. It feels weird to put them somewhere anyone can see, but I believe it'll do me good, teach me a few things.
I aim to keep things simple and easily navigable, this is not a SharePoint site, after all. (Thank all the gods for that.)