Table of contents
What happened?
Due to reasons, I decided to archive my old website, which then prompts the question of where should I be writing my blogs. I managed to rebuild a new portfolio website and decided to separate my portfolio from blogs this time.
There are quite a few reasons, but I guess the main reason is that the theme isn't suitable for blogging. Initially, I wanted to rebuild a blog website using Next.js, however, I decided not to.
Why Hashnode
I’ve looked at some of my favorite bloggers, such as Prometeus’ https://halfrost.com/ and my recent Victoria’s https://lo-victoria.com/ to gain inspiration. Aside from the contents, I loved their design a lot.
As usual, I checked the sources of their websites, Prometeus' was hosted in Ghost while Victoria hosted hers HERE! I quickly disregarded Ghost due to the price, and Hashnode seemed to be the best option for me.
Upon looking into it, I was totally wowed! Of course, free things are always better, but their customizability and business model are simply mind-blowing.
That is, I was sold.
Oh, and of course I avoided Dev.to and medium because of user paywall and again, some features are premium-only.
What about DIY
Erm, well, I guess the main reason is lazy kinda busy recently. I was also lacking the motivation to start another web project after building my portfolio website. Especially after reading this article, I just gave up on building my own blog site.
In summary:
LazyRather busy recentlyLack of design idea (I'm just bad at this)
Hashnode is convenient and more specialized in things like SEO and social media sharing
I wanted to focus on writing, not building and maintaining the site
Many tools are provided by Hashnode like commenting, RSS and newsletter which would be too much work to implement myself
Back then with my older sites, I often spent too much time on tinkering with the tiny details (like margins...) and neglected the content, so let's see where can I get this time! 🤩