I always have this nagging feeling that I need to write blog, to gaining more audience, to have more meaningful relationship, etc but I've never been able to really get to it. I think the main reason is the fear of putting something out there half-baked content, and nobody care about it. Other reason is it's always been a drag to setting up blog post and publishing it.
The first reason is getting addressed since I'm convinced that I should write blog anyway because first I decided to quit my jobs to go indie. So writing a blog post and building up my audience is a must have. And now I have much more time at my hand than when I have a day job, which also make thing a bit easier.
The second reason, is somewhat addressed with my current setup of environment for posting blog post more easily, a way to reduce as much friction as possible.
There are a few core principles when it come to publishing content on the web that I belived in:
- You should always own your content, avoid platform locked in at all cost.
- Your writing and publishing process should be as frictionless as possible
Own your content
It's too common these day software service get shutdown, get accquired or change in a way that you strongly disagree with, it's really not worth it to have all of your content and audience being controlled by [insert any platform here]. Having your content locked in with any specific platform is terrible realization when it happens.
Today technology make this is impressively easy, I can use all open source component to easily build my blog, host it wherever I want with very little cost or even for free. Specifically I'm talking about building your content as markdown file then run it through a static site generator, then deploy it to a highly scalable CDN quite easily.
Make writing and publishing as frictionless as possible
For a novice content writer like me, having a system setup with as little friction as possible help me to focus on writing and get less distracted by complicated process of publishing is great. I think it is similar to the way when you trying to build a habit of excercise every morning, it's more effective that you setup your routine so that it's as easy for you to get started than relying on your will power. So for me, setting up a good environment to induce my to keep the habit of writing is a step on the right direction.
I'll detail my writing/publishing process in the next blog post, but as of right now, publishing a new blog post is just a simple of a git commit and push to github. Then voila my new blog post is online. It's measure by seconds and a few key stroke.
And if i don't like any setup or make any mistake, I can easily revert all the change and come back to where my site was since last commit.