I have always really liked the idea of a personal blog - in my imagination, I see it as one’s very own private tiny island in the vast seas of the endless, global Internet network. Since blogs are usually aimed at sharing personal thoughts and experiences, they remain one of the last non-profit frontiers of the internet, and provide number of benefits both for the author and the network (see Jack Rhysider’s Tweet thread for some of these).

By blogging you will become a better writer and communicator, learn the concepts better, open new opportunities, have a fantastic notebook for self reference, maybe make money, become appreciated by more people, and show off your IT skills. @JackRhysider

My family and some friends will surely remember many of my previous attempts at blogging. Way back in 2006 (at a very wise age of thirteen), I used to casually blog on Vox.com (prior to the domain being acquired by the current media company). I also owned multiple Wordpress instances, a Blogspot instance, and very likely at least few additional services which I already forgot about.

My very last attempt at blogging ended right when I started my undergrad in 2013 - and for almost 10 long years, I did not blog at all. Instead, I shifted towards keeping a personal journal using the DayOne iOS app.

Meanwhile, a significant shift towards social media started to take place - a shift I have never really grown keen on. Data ownership & privacy are things that I care about, and everytime I opened Facebook, it felt more addictive than rewarding. The experience always felt a bit too all over the place, with the noise (ads) to signal (friends) ratio being way too high. Later on, the principle of “you are not a customer, you are the product” would only become more apparent, fueled by situations such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Luckily, my online blogging hiatus has finally changed last year.

Back then, I finally found my own perfect blogging solution:

  • static blogging platform Hugo (free! + open-source)

  • with media hosted on Cloudinary CDN (free tier available),

  • the option to deploy it on Github Pages (free!)

  • and distribute via Netlify CDN (free!).

Since the content (except for media) is hosted on Github, this blog is also likely the first solution that should be permanent (unless Github goes down - in such case, losing this blog would be least of our issues). Cloudinary for photo hosting might be considered the weakest spot of the system - yet, for now, I believe its convenience outweights the risks.

Devon Zuegel once wrote a really cool article named Everything is Amazing, But Nothing is Ours, highlighting some of the developments in the ways we use and build our internet services: going from files to services (which are more convenient) at the cost of highly complex dependencies. I have to say that going against the trend with a static platform like Hugo feels great - it’s so simple, and it works so well. There’s something about having one’s blog completely database and bloat-free, in both a local & remote git repository. Moving the whole instance elsewhere (or to a self-hosted solution) is also as easy as moving files around.

I feel confident that this platform will work (and last) for years ahead. My next task is to add a simple newsletter for those who will want to follow the updates posted here.

Thanks for reading me! :)