When knowing how to code could bite you back

phanatuan — Thu, 14 May 2020 10:12:22 +0000

I always think knowing how to code is an advantage, a major one. I could come up with an idea and execute it at the same time.

It’s correct! But it dawns on me after a while that being a coder makes me consider a more complicated path for an idea.

I do not know code before (2 years ago), and I built up a successful blog with 2000 visits/day, earning a respectable income with only Wordpress and Shared Hosting (Yes!! Shared Hosting - and I message the Customer Service team a lot! I do not know SHIT!).

I focus on the core: content, and promoting the content (aka hustling). It’s simple, easy, and most importantly it works!

Now, I take almost 2 months just to have 10 article on my newly launched blog. I built a custom admin, cook up a frontend with fancy site generator (Gatsby), and plug in an old-soul NodeJS API.

But then I realize, the most important focus for a blog is content. Everything else is a nice-to-have, but without content, your blog is just a no-man-land. Why I have to dread with all the fancy technology set up, rather than kicking start and drill in the most important stuff: creating content?

Maybe it’s not the problem with coding. It’s MY problem of over-complicating things, and suffering the shiny object syndrome. With code, I feel powerful. I feel I could tackle anything with 50 lines of code (or more). And I try to make use of the newly found power by finding every single opportunity to utilize it.

So … How to fix this? Truth to be told, I do not know. The good thing now is I finally launch, but I still find myself tinkering with the coding part to fine tune the details bit by bit, which again prevent myself from the core of my business.

Maybe I have to live with this, like we eventually learn to live with Covid-19. I’ll write a follow-up to this post once I figure out!

Quite an important thought for the day huh?

Tuan

This post was originally posted on my blog

Problems with Gatsby & WordPress

phanatuan — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 16:27:08 +0000

I am a self-taught coder, and I am in the process of porting my shared-hosted Wordpress to Gatsby (hosted on Netlify).

I make the basic works (displaying the post and pages onto Netlify). However, I have some following concerns:

For page and post content, the data returns is html format. It was displayed in React as

<div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{__html: wordpressPost.content}} />

The problems arise are:

How could I add custom format for the Wordpress content (the p, h1, ...)
How could I add the email newsletter form (maybe at 50% of the content, or after the 3rd paragraph)
How could I use the Gatsby Link component for <a> tag that points to the site (internal URL)
How to add advertisement code block across the content

...

I would really appreciate if someone could shed light on these matters. I really love the Gatsby look and feel, but these issues are holding me back.

Thanks,
Tuan.

DEV Community: phanatuan

When knowing how to code could bite you back

Problems with Gatsby & WordPress