I’ve always wanted to have a blog and every year it comes to my list as one of my new year resolutions. However, this year I took a different approach - no resolution, but just do it. Don’t worry about my English writing, don’t be afraid of making mistakes, stop worrying and thinking… Then, voilà - here is my blog!
I love my job as there are always something new I have to learn or skills I need to improve. I learn every single day from my colleagues and I feel really grateful to collaborate with them. I’d like to use my blog to share my thoughts or document my professional journey.
So for my very first post on this blog, I’d like to write about tools I used to start this blog. I’ve researched a bit about professional blog and platforms. There are well-known platforms like WordPress, tumblr, Wix, and etc. or static site generators like Jekyll. I’ve tested out WordPress before and it was a bit complicated for me. I just wanted a simple blog but WordPress provided me with tons of options that I didn’t need.
I came across GatsbyJs which is a modern framework for websites. GatsbyJs is an open source React-based, GraphQL powered static site generator. It’s a powerful yet easy tool to build your site. In addition, there is a great Gatsby ecosystem where you can find different plugins and starters to meet your needs. For example, I didn’t design a layout of my blog from scratch. Rather, I installed one of the starters - gatsby-starter-lumen - to create my blog. Besides my writing time, it literally took me less than 5 minutes to develop a structure. It would be helpful if you were already familiar with HTML, CSS, and React, but these are not mandatory requirements to start with Gatsby JS. Moreover, Gatsby JS provides a great documentation on how to start for beginners.
To deploy my blog, I needed a hosting service, so I choose Netlify as it is also suggested by gatsby-starter-lumen. You can deploy your blog with other web hosting services, but Netlify provides a free account option with great features like automatic deployment from my Github repo and free TLS certificate. Although it was my first time to use Netlify, it was very smooth to deploy and easy to make my blog live. Like Gatsby, Netlify also provides a great documentation.
I aim to write two blog postings per month and hope to learn and improve my knowledge and skills along the way. Wish me good luck!