What Kind of Blog Should I Build?

I finished the common curriculum at 42 Seoul, and then it became December 2023.
For a while, I had wanted to build my own developer blog, but every time I got partway through it, I ran into development issues that were hard to solve, and I also stayed too busy to finish it. Because of that, the idea of a developer blog kept feeling like unfinished business in the back of my mind. This time, though, I planned to finally make one through a blog study group with other 42 Seoul students.

The people in the study came together for all kinds of reasons. Some had web experience, some were completely new to web development, and some just wanted to try being part of a study group. Including me, there were six of us.

We started on November 27, 2023, and met every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until December 22, from 1 PM to 5 PM, to build together. Before starting development, we decided that everyone should think through what kind of blog they wanted to make, plan how they wanted to structure their own developer blog before the next meeting, find reference designs that could help with the frontend, and define an initial development scope. Developers often like to start by building right away, and that can be good too, but if you build without a plan, the scope keeps growing. And when you're making frontend components and searching for ideas on the fly, you keep finding things that look nice, then spending a lot of time trying this and that. I wanted to reduce that kind of wasted time.

So I started thinking about how I wanted to build mine. I asked myself, "What kind of people do I want to come to my blog?" and "Who would actually benefit from reading my posts?" Just thinking about it didn't lead to any clear answers, so I opened Figma, created a project for the blog, and tried organizing my thoughts there. First, I wrote down the topic and purpose I wanted for my personal blog.

Defining the blog's theme, purpose, and goals

1. The main goal is to mostly post development-related topics that can become my area of professional expertise, while sharing the ups and downs I went through while building services through my own experiences.
2. I want to show the books I read / want to read / have read, spark people's interest, and use that as a way to keep a personal promise with myself and the people I'll meet about how many books I'll read each month, while continuing to grow myself.
3. I want to write relatable posts so people visit often, gain people's interest, and hopefully build some recognition in the development industry too. I want to start with a blog as the foundation for eventually starting YouTube.
4. I think I could earn ad revenue through Google AdSense, or maybe even make money by getting contacted directly to write sponsored posts (introducing bootcamps, introducing 42 Seoul, restaurant reviews, book reviews, or whatever else might come up).

In terms of purpose, I wanted to write posts that could help other people, improve my speaking and writing skills, and introduce myself to good people.
As for the blog's theme, I wanted to share what I experienced while developing, articles and videos that helped me, and small bits of everyday life.

I knew I wouldn't have time to build everything from the start, but I still wrote down all the features I wanted. I thought it would be nice to have screens for the main page, post detail page, book reviews, book review detail, tag collection, series, and an about me page. Across those pages, I needed search, lists, navigation between screens, and button events.

For the design, I wanted it to feel easy for people to read, so I thought about what kind of design would do that best. I wondered if something with a newspaper-like feel would work, so I looked for designs that emphasized lines. I referenced site designs that made use of straight lines, then sketched things out in Figma in my own way and built the components.

The design ended up changing a bit from the blog I have now, but back then, having something laid out in advance helped a lot. I didn't have to spend too much time worrying about placement and sizing, and I built the components with tailwind css. That was how I handled the design before starting development, and during the study period I finished the main page, the book review page, the tag page, and the about me page.

If you're interested in the GitHub repo for the blog I made, please visit GitHub - get6.github.io!

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

— Thomas Jefferson