Welcome to my personal site/blog.

I don’t really expect anyone to know this, but this is my third iteration of a personal blog. The goal was always to blog more. Specifically about software. Each time the site just withers away. Forgotten.

My first attempt, around 2014, I built my site using PHP. But there was a twist. I had recently learned Ruby on Rails and thought it’d be cool to try and replicate it’s MVC pattern, which included a routing system to control URL paths. This was a learning process for me and I enjoyed it. Really made me love Ruby more ironically.

The second attempt I just built it with Ruby on Rails directly about 5/6 years ago. This was obviously a joy as it gave me control of the features I wanted. But there was a downside. I had to implement all the basic stuff, which I took for granted in a traditional CMS. Even though I could implement it all, in hindsight I should not have re-invented the wheel (at least I didn’t roll my own encryption).

Here we are with my third attempt. Why is this different?

Well, I just don’t have the same amount of time I use to have. I already learned how to set up imagemagick, formatting the blog content, setting up tags and a comment system, and figuring out how to secure the server and manage it. I’ve seen and participated in how the sausage is made. I can now truly appreciate what a CMS brings to the table and know why I don’t want to build most of it myself.

I chose to build this new site with WordPress namely because I will be working on WordPress Mobile. There’s that. But also, I’ve tried many different frameworks to build a blog. I’m honestly tired of managing how all the pieces fit. Every other CMS or framework just doesn’t have the level of support and community that WordPress does for someone who doesn’t want to design and build everything. If you can think it, there’s likely a plugin for it.

Here’s to a year full of writing. Cheers!