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Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

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Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#301

Post by ilyt »

callahad wrote: post #133
jjice wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any tips for avoiding the urge to spend time setting up a fancy SSG and playing with that and never actually writing? I've done that a few times over the years... I imagine the advice would often be "just write", which I do agree is fair advice, but wondering if you had any takes.

I'm not sure Xe is the right person to ask about avoiding playing with the site's backend: https://xeiaso.net/blog/series/site-update ;-) (Maybe the trick is: if you must tinker, also turn that tinkering into writing?)

Mine was fueled mostly with pure hatred of wordpress

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#302

Post by indigodaddy »

simonw wrote: post #285
a4isms wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way back when Joel Spolsky was a high-profile blogger in the "starting your own software business" genre, I asked him for advice about my blogging, and he replied "Stop what you're doing and get your blog onto your own domain." I had procrastinated because other platforms made everything so damn easy, and hosting my own blog meant being a part-time web admin. But I took his advice, and set up http://raganwald.com . S…

When I moved my blog to a domain I owned I added little notes to my old content saying "Previously hosted on ..." in the hope that searches for that content by URL would find the new homes. Example: https://simonwillison.net/2004/Jan/22/defendingWebApplicatio... - at the bottom it says "Previously hosted at http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2004/01/22/defendingWebAppl... " I just tested it and it works! https://www.go…

Very clever, nicely done!

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#303

Post by rsoto »

I've been blogging for 20+ years on my personal website [1] (disclaimer: it's in spanish). I started it when I was a teenager as a way to teach myself discipline. I used to write every single day. Now it's a bit of a monthly occurrance but it has done quite a few things for me.

1. Landed me a job, and a few gigs 2. Started new friendships 3. Inadvertently taught me SEO 4. Did a bunch of side projects 5. Gave me my 15 minutes of fame

I only wished I could write more often, but it's been a great journey. I want it to keep going.

1: https://www.therror.com/

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#304

Post by ilyt »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #194

OK I will be the party-pooper this time. Blogging is a waste of time. You see a website with 100 blog posts. That could easily be 1000 hours of work. And then if you ask such person if he/she gained something from it the answer will be of course. The relevant question should be - was it worth the effort? Could they have gotten the same thing with less effort in some other way? When/if you are starting to blog you sho…

Back when I blogged it was mostly "I did a thing, I want to put notes about the thing somewhere, might as well make a blog post out of it". And it came handy a bunch of times.

Why not personal notes but a blog ? Coz I can link it to co-worker

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#305

Post by luizs »

reactordev wrote: post #276
abhaynayar wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how I'd never heard the word "spelunk" before today, and now in the span of the last few hours, I've heard it multiple times in three different contexts.

I take it you don’t play video games either. Spelunky was a pretty popular Indy game back in the day. Named after, you guessed it, spelunking. I first learned the word from “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego” back in the 90s. I had to ask my parents what it meant.

There's also an old NES game called Spelunker.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#306

Post by mattbgates »

This month, confessionsoftheprofessions.com, turned 10 years old. It has helped me understand SEO and building other websites. It has made the equivalent of a few hundred bucks a year or averages out to paying for itself. It also helped spark the idea for a book I wrote you can find at mylifeasawomanproject.com (project interviewing hundreds of women around the world during covid-19). It's put me in touch from people all over the world. And of course, it has made me a better writer.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#307

Post by mafiaboi »

Keeping a log and history of my dealings.

Even though the traffic is very limited to my blog - which I believe is the case with 99% of personal blogs/websites - going back to the blog to write more stuff and reading through old posts are useful. It gives you an insight of how you were thinking about something else or something that you should care about but you forgot to do

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#308

Post by pwim »

I started blogging about developer events I was attending in Japan back in 2010. As I was the only one writing about it in English, the content naturally ranked well.

That led a fellow Canadian to my blog, who asked how I found a job here. My email back to him started to get pretty long, and so I turned it into an article for the blog.

That article attracted more people looking for developer jobs in Japan, so I started collecting their email addresses as I occasionally came across developer job opportunities that didn’t require Japanese.

After about a year of this, I heard a company had made a successful hire through the list, and so I started charging companies.

From there, the business organically expanded, until I was working with many of the major tech companies in Japan.

It’s now a business generating a life-changing amount of income. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t of started blogging with no real intent other than to share what I was learning.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#309

Post by throwwwaway69 »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #250
throwwwaway69 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I'm blogging to demonstrate knowledge and thought around professional topics with the intent to help demonstrate to future employers I know what I'm talking about?

I would bet that the potential future employer would be more impressed by your ability to make and solve things, rather than talk about them. So unless you will be applying for a teaching or writing position it would be safer to use your knowledge for starting projects and creating a portfolio.

I'm in product management (though a former engineer). You're right that knowing the tools and how to apply them is definitely meaningful. But I also have to demonstrate that I know more than just the use of tools. And unless I want to build out 20 different projects, I feel like writing about the application rather than just doing the implementation is the best path forward with my limited time
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