Ask HN: What Is Your Blog?

23 points by SuboptimalEng ↗ HN
Hello HN, I've been considering starting a blog, but realized I didn't know where to start. Wanted some inspiration so I thought I'd ask ya'll:

1. What is your blog about?

2. How often do you write on it?

3. Where do you host it (medium, substack, self-hosted, etc.) and why?

4. Link?

36 comments

[ 6.9 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] thread
1. Sensor readings, their applications, and electronics projects

2. When I have an idea for an article and time to write it; average once every week to once every other week.

3. Self-hosted, since I have full control over it, and it might draw attention to the items I'm selling.

4. https://www.anyleaf.org/blog

1. Whatever I feel like writing about: largely rust, things I've enjoyed reading, opinions about work stuff, the occasional random other stuff, etc.

2. Whenever I find the time, somewhere between a few times a week and twice a year, depending on lots of other circumstances.

3. Self-hosted (via azure & cloudflare) HTML generated from markdown files using a fun little utility I built as a learning project (all the generator code, markdown, & HTML is stashed on GH: https://github.com/mplanchard/speedy). For whatever reason I'm more motivated to maintain something I've built myself as compared to previous attempts with medium and such. The freedom to do whatever I want, however I want is nice. I can present things simply, with little to no adornment, avoid pushing trackers and ads on people, explicitly release my content under whatever copyright I want, etc. So far I've yet to incur any costs beyond Azure's free plan, but while it's been free so far, I'd gladly pay a bit of money to continue to keep it under my control.

4. https://blog.mplanchard.com/

> For whatever reason I'm more motivated to maintain something I've built myself as compared to previous attempts with medium and such. The freedom to do whatever I want, however I want is nice. I can present things simply, with little to no adornment, avoid pushing trackers and ads on people, explicitly release my content under whatever copyright I want, etc.

Totally agree. For my blog (https://faical.dev) I have a very similar setup (S3 & Cloudflare) with HTML generated from Markdown using a small command line tool I built (https://github.com/ftchirou/article). For publishing, I push a Markdown file to a repo and a Bitrise workflow takes care of generating the HTML and uploading to S3.

1. WordPress and Laravel tips that we've learned through doing client work as well as case studies for clients

2. I would say we average once a month or so.

3. Self-hosted WordPress. It's what we're familiar with and we can customize it easily if needed.

4. https://alphaparticle.com/blog/

1. Mostly self-promotional articles to lead towards my ebooks. But I'm proud of my 'customizing pandoc' and 'what next in Python' posts.

2. I am averaging about 1 post per 2 months :(

3. GitHub, because it is free and I can use markdown. Currently using a jekyll theme, but I'm planning to switch to static-site generator like https://github.com/getzola/zola

4. https://learnbyexample.github.io/

1. I write a mix between programming career advice and technical tutorials.

2. I’m writing a book about career advice for programmers that will be published through Holloway early next year, so I don’t post on my blog very often. I’m trying to write in the open at least once a month though.

3. It’s hosted on netlify because it’s free. I use Hugo to generate the static site.

4. https://www.exponentialbackoff.com/

1. I write about the more philosophical aspects of software engineering. As the years passed I got more interested in the "why". Why do we use certain techniques. Why do we build software the way we do. I started researching my questions and writing essays based on what I've found mixed with some of my own thoughts.

2. I post twice a month.

3. It's hosted on Netlify and built with Gatsby. All of my articles are just markdown files.

4. https://alexkondov.com/

1. Technologies & lifestyle decisions

2. Sporadically, 1x a month on average

3. AWS S3 + Cloudfront, to control recurring costs and support spikey traffic

4. https://maxmautner.com

1. Streaming, server-side media processing, graphics, networking and all things related. These are things that interest me and I'm sure there are my soulmates out there with similar interests.

2. I just recently started.

3. Hosted on Netlify, built with Hugo.

4. https://ivarsblog.com

Great to hear. Everyone should write and publish online. Writing clarifies your thoughts. Publishing online allows you to receive feedback from others.

1. Personal development and life updates, but I'm working towards writing market commentary. Took a step in that direction with my latest post.

2. Once a week. It's a fairly tough publishing schedule though and longer essays take more than a week to write. I may rethink it in the future.

3. Wordpress on Bluehost because it was easy when I started. I wouldn't recommend it though. Load times aren't great and changes are unwieldy.

4. https://jonathanliu.me

1. Anything and everything. It is often about my current research or an interesting tid-bit from math, philosophy, social sciences etc. It is more of a fluid knowledge base than a blog.

2. I commit to the source code a couple times a week, but keep updating posts whenever I find time.

3. I host the source code on Github and deploy on Netlify.

4. https://im.perhapsbay.es

1. My experience learning technology, notes on books that I read and everything related to self improvement.

2. I have a reminder for every friday so yes, mostly 1 post weekly which is what I try to keep up to.

3. Github, because I wanted to learn github pages and also design a simple blog myself.

4. http://codingbbq.github.io

1. Various topics, most often about electronics and software. I'm currently writing about a system for RF vector measurements I'm making.

2. Around 1 post every 1 to 2 weeks.

3. A self-hosted static-site generator I made myself 15 years ago.

4. https://www.tablix.org/~avian/blog/

1. Software engineering in general. Topics I get in contact with and think about. A lot of it gets a bit philosphical because I don't have clear answers.

2. Maybe once a month

3. Self hosted. Got a server anyway, so I can as well host it myself.

4. https://stefanschick.eu

1. Mainly computational and applied maths - especially in the context of statistical sampling and computer graphics.

Some of my posts are detailed articles which, in my next life will evolve to journal papers, but most are just interesting things I have stumbled upon and explored, and then shared because I thought others might find them helpful and/or interesting, too.

2. Sporadically, but about once a month.

3. Wordpress. Why? I just downloaded some themes and a handful of plugins, and voila! I had a blog that is: well designed; has a responsive layout; elegantly displays math equations, and although 99% of the time has miniscule traffic, it copes well with occasional HN-induced traffic spikes. This means I can then set it and forget it, and focus more on writing.

4. http://extremelearning.com.au/

1. Mainly book summaries/notes/reviews. Planning to evolve it into full-scale compilatory essays. 2. About once a week or once new material is available i.e. I've finished a new book. 3. Github because I haven't gotten around to hosting it on a "real" domain yet. 4. https://skorbenko.github.io PS. Any comments as per the improvement of content/styling/direction is welcome. You can comment here or shoot me an email through the form on the website.
My blog is about field stories on product and engineering : https://amols.blog

I started recently. So just once a week, I publish. Writing happens whenever I find a topic worth organising or sharing

Netlify. It’s free. I use gatsby theme borrowed from Victor Zhou

1. Technical topics that strike my interest. Thinking of expanding it to include other things I'm interested in.

2. Not enough.

3. Gastby.js and Netlify because it was easy to get started with.

4. http://carlchesterlloyd.com/

I write about ideas inspired from business,engineering and finance. I also share original thoughts of mine.

The goal is to enable my readers leverage these ideas for practical applications.

I currently release once a week on Sundays at 9am BST.

My newsletter is https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/

Check it out and please subscribe. It's growing and exciting.

1. 'Random' as I develop a new direction.

2. Aiming for twice-weekly.

3. Regular web host w/WP. In the interest of 'stop playing around with tools/static sites and just write'.

4. https://jamesgill.net/articles/

1. What ever has piqued my interest. Mostly money topics and technical topics.

2. Anywhere from once a month to three times a week.

3. GitHub pages (i.e. a static Jekyll blog) with a domain purchased through Google. Mostly because it's free (except for the $12/year for the domain) but also because it gives me a lot of control over the actual HTML.

4. https://www.joehxblog.com/

1. I vlog about my 10 year perspective on maintaining and growing my software business (a web app marketplace I bootstrapped in 2010). Things like architecture, stability, performance,seo etc. I'm a strong believer in ignoring the fashions and searching for the timeless in software, and this is my attempt.

2. Once a week at the moment. It's a lot of effort but I hope to monetize eventually (similar to railscasts or Laracasts).

3.Self-hosted (to avoid platform risk) plus YouTube (for organic inbound)

4. https://www.semicolonandsons.com/l/rails

1. Security, privacy, software development, music, random goings on...

2. From a couple times a week to every other month.

3. Self-hosted because of development-ease and customizability.

4. https://www.eivindarvesen.com