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How I created this blog

— Code — 2 min read

Coding from scratch

I wanted to create my own blog for a long time. I just wanted to put my ideas somewhere. While coding a website from scratch is fine, inventing the wheel can be time consuming.

GPT help

I asked Microsoft Copilot to help me summarize my idea for a blog that will have music, coding, etc and I will be also able to write some custom components. This was it's response:

Your website idea is a personal blog that serves as a creative and professional portfolio. Here's a summary of the concept:


- *Music Section*: You'll showcase your original songs with embedded YouTube videos and write music-related guides.
- *Tech Section*: You'll link to your GitHub for project visibility, share top projects, and provide tech guides.
- *Professional Networking*: You'll integrate your LinkedIn activity and profile link for networking and career opportunities.


Given your technical background and the need for easy content updates, I suggest using a *static site generator* like *Hugo* or *Jekyll. These tools are great for blogs and personal websites because they're lightweight, fast, and you can host them on platforms like **GitHub Pages* or *Azure Static Web Apps*.


Here's a simple plan to get started:


1. *Choose a Static Site Generator*: Hugo and Jekyll are popular choices. They have themes that are easy to customize and are well-suited for blogs.
2. *Set Up Your Project*: Initialize your site with the chosen generator. Customize the theme to fit your personal brand and content structure.
3. *Content Management*: Write your content in Markdown files, which are straightforward to edit and update. For dynamic content like LinkedIn activity, you can use APIs to fetch and display this data.
4. *Hosting*: Deploy your site to Azure Static Web Apps. Your Azure credits will cover the costs, and it integrates well with GitHub for CI/CD.
5. *Continuous Deployment*: Set up a GitHub Actions workflow to automatically build and deploy your site whenever you push new content.


This approach leverages your existing skills and resources, and it's scalable for future growth. Plus, with Azure and GitHub, you'll have a robust deployment pipeline that makes updating content a breeze. Happy coding and content creation! 🎶💻

I used Gatsby because it had some great project templates, and it supported working in React.

I then chose from their template gallery a minimal blog template. This way, the blog will be customizable and I will be able to add fancy react components by my own.

Then I just:

  1. Installed Gatsby with the minimal blog template
  2. Started writing some posts.

Now the code is running nicely in http://localhost:8000/

But I want this blog to be reached by typing http://www.aviv.blog/

Therefore I decided to:

  1. Buy the domain aviv.blog
  2. Deploy it to netlify as it's the easiest choice for gatsby.