Personal Notes

Choosing the Blogging Platform

Jan 19, 2022

Have been wanting to make it a practice to consistently write. And, in the process learn the art of story-telling as well. Before even starting to write. Always a lot of time went by in deciding the ideal platform. This led to procrastination. I started writing on platforms like Dev. to, Ghost, Medium. Struggled to continue and stopped.

😕 Why the confusion?

  • More options more confusion. Period.

For years I optimized for building. Spent a lot of time figuring out should I build the platform from scratch, or maybe use a CMS, use Hugo because the themes looked cool and many other friends were using it, then thought of Pelican as it was Python-based and I could customize it if needed.

The more blogs you visit, the more ideas you get. As a result, my own blog seemed to be less good than the rest. Ironically, the metric for comparison was never the quality of writing instead the look and feel of the blog.

  • Developer Bias

Asking developer friends which platform to write your blog on is the same as asking them which programming language is a good first programming language?

Lot of bias leads to analysis paralysis.

Available Options

Why Hashnode?

  • Platform - It is pre-built. You don’t have to invest your time in building or fixing the platform. Time in hand is finite.

  • Community - Community already exists. You have the option to decide either to share your write up with the community or not.

  • Blogs Backup - Backup of all the published blogs is available on your personal Github. No data loss. And, making it easy to migrate in the future if needed.

  • Distraction free - Distraction free interface

🎯 Learning from Indecisiveness and Staying with the Problem for Longer

  • Optimize for one thing at a time.
  • Purpose of starting the blog is to get better at writing. Let go of the itch to build.
  • Don’t compare. It’s a trap.
  • Don’t worry and do not occupy your mind with platform-related things.
  • Remove anything that increases friction in your writing workflow.

**✍️ Only one single-minded focus is to Write. **

🤓 Why I decided to write this post?

When next time my mind plays the trick to switch the platform. This post will be a reminder of why I started.

🤔 Did you also face the same problem? How did you decide on your platform?

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