Two years of blogging

This blog has evolved a lot since it began. I have learned new things over that time, and used what I have learned to improve the blog along the way. One thing quickly became obvious; having a personal website means a never-ending journey of tinkering and exploring. Having a space that you can truly call your own is a rarity on the modern web. Interacting with readers has been a blast. There are so many small blogs around the web if you know where to look, and reading posts on those blogs is now one of favourite activities. Blog posts can encompass anything from brilliant solutions to specific problems, to more mundane thoughts about which video games someone played in the past week. All of it is awesome.

A rough timeline of blog evolution

This blog started on blog.markpitblado.me on a hosted Ghost plan. Having a blog on a subdomain is a fine idea, but without a blog, what would be the purpose of markpitblado.me? While I loved the ghost writing experience, I also felt limited in the amount of customization that I could do. After becoming more comfortable with git, I moved to Timothy’s NextJS starter blog template. Much to my surprise, having the blog included in the README for that repository picked up a lot of traffic. A part of me felt bad for the people that clicked on my site, because it means they may miss out on finding Jason’s blog which has some of the coolest design I have ever seen. Eventually, the npm package maintenance become too much, and I looked for something easier to maintain. Eleventy fit that bill.

The Eleventy version of the site is what you are seeing now. It expands on the Bliss theme by Łukasz Wójcik. It has been great, and the next task on my list is to migrate it over to Eleventy version 3.

In addition to the changes through templates and stacks, there have also been additional auxiliary components. I transitioned from GitHub to Codeberg after becoming a member, which involved setting up vercel to integrate with Codeberg repositories. I setup analytics, got rid of them, then added them back in again. I am still torn as to whether they are worth it, but it has been neat to see just how far a little blog can go. I have no idea who added one of my posts to hacker news, but it was nice to know that someone found the ideas useful.

Wrestling with the idea of permanence

On multiple occasions, I have published something only for it to no longer be true months later. For example, Goodbye Logseq, Obisidian, and Vimwiki. Hello, mdBook! is one of the most popular articles on the site^[1], and yet I have since switched away from mdbook and into mkdocs (well, technically, mdbook, astro, then mkdocs). I have really liked the “Disclaimer” functionality of the Bliss theme to add a note to the top of a post, without altering what was originally written.

In case you can’t tell from everything written up until now, I change a lot. I learn through exploring new things. However, I have begun to recognize the consequences of those actions in 404 links and potential confusion. I am proud that aside from those first couple months, the domain of the site has stayed constant, and will stay constant for years to come. While migrating between themes, I managed to keep blog posts all under /blog without breaking any links, and I think I have also managed to do so with the most recent notes transition. I’ve setup link checking as part of my blog flow to avoid making the same mistakes in the future, and will slowly work my way through posts already published and tidy up broken links.

Your website is the base of your online tree

Over the past few weeks, I have seen some great posts from other bloggers about the importance of a personal website, whatever that site may look like. Andreas posts about the concept of an Personal Hub, where people can always return to as you switch between other services and sites. Nora echoes these views, breaking down different levels of technical complexity that are available to pick from. I really like Joel’s post about just getting started with blogging. Having a personal website should be something that is accessible to as many people as possible, especially as mainstream social media becomes more fractured.

Conclusion

Most importantly, blogging has been fun. When I started out, I was nervous about how a post had to be the best, how the writing had to be a particular shade of brilliant. Now, I just write. So here’s to two years, and to all the years to come. Thank you for reading this blog, and Happy Early New Year!