Don't code a new website for your blog

Coding your own blog may become more of a nuisance than a fun hobby

Like many, I wanted a coding side project to showcase my skills. I decided to code a new website to host my blog.

It would enable me to post blog entries. It would also give me a landing page to link to my LinkedIn, PluralSight, and LeetCode profiles, and other curated online personas. You may have a few of these, and the links will bloat your resume.

A blogging website was not my passion. I did not intend to revolutionize the blogging industry.

And it did become a nuisance.

My friend showed me a really simple alternative.

And with all of the problems in the world, do you want to spend your time writing code to enable a single person to publish blog articles?

A simple alternative - GitHub Pages

One day my friend Brandon Boone presented me with a quick and easy way to get a free landing page with a clean subdomain - GitHub Pages.

It can host and serve an HTML page. Or, similar to dev.to - it can convert a Markdown file to markdown with minimal setup. And you get a free GitHub subdomain in the form of https://username.github.io.

You can also easily point a new domain to your GitHub pages with a CNAME record.

It's this easy:

1. Clone the new repository

git clone https://github.com/username/username.github.io

1. Create an index.html file with content
2. Commit and push
3. Launch your favorite browser and navigate to https://username.github.io.

Want to use Markdown instead of HTML?

Unite instead of div.

1. Create a README.md with content (instead of an index.html)
2. Add this YAML Jekyll file to the root of your repo

theme: jekyll-theme-slate
kramdown:
  input: Kramdown

Still want to have a blog?

Link from the markdown file to your blog or blog posts on an established blogging platform such as medium.com or dev.to. They will be free, feature-rich, and may even market your posts for you.
 
Don't code your own blog. Do something more meaningful with your life. Maybe publish a new GitHub repository to solve a problem that hasn't been solved yet, join an open-source project, etc.

Check out my simple GitHub landing page at https://joehoppe.github.io. Leave a comment on what you think, or suggest improvements to my own!