Hi everyone. I have been planing my 100 Days of Code this week, and want to have a blog as both a personal journal and a blog describing a newbies way to learn. Have any of you done the same? Do you have any tips and tricks when it comes to both content and platform? I did make a Medium profile as part of FeeCodeCamps tasks. My plan so far is of course to write about the coding I’ve been doing that day, as well as challenges, thoughts and other things that comes to my mind. Would love to see some of your blogs for inspiration.
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This is something I’m looking at doing myself. I’ve built a number of non-tech related blogs with Wordpress. It can be straight forward to get up and running, but you can also dive deep into the HTML, CSS, and PHP if you want. One warning though, with all the plugins and options available it’s easy to get caught up in the website setup phase. It’s best to pick a theme and start writing. As the site grows, you can then start to consider all the bells and whistles.
I’m interested to hear what everyone else has to say.
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Thanks @MattWilliams! Great tip. I know HTML and CSS and I’ve been dabbling with WP earlier. And I agree with you. I will try to focus on writing and learning code, and not get caught up in making a website full of plugins etc. Maybe it can grow as I learn coding. What have you been writing about earlier? Personal blogs?
I used to run a site that taught amateur wine making. There was a podcast, youtube channel, calculators and articles. I ran that for a good five or six years before I just ran out of energy on the topic. I learned a ton by customizing the site, writing javascript calculators and what not. Now it’s time to get some real training, so I joined FCC.
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Thats cool @MattWilliams. Sounds like you know are pretty solid on coding already. I wish u all the best and let me know if you make a blog and come up with a strategy. Would love to hear about it and follow.
I actually tried doing this a couple of months ago. My main purpose for maintaining a blog was actually to keep it as a notebook, but I lost motivation a few weeks ago. I’ll share some of my pitfalls with you.
Have a set schedule. I tried to post an entry every day, but life just got in the way. One thing that I struggled with was completing some of the programming challenges that I presented myself throughout the week. I’ve been kicking butt at some of these projects, and I just don’t want to close out Brackets and open up Wordpress when I’m on a roll. Looking back on it now, I should reserve an extra 30 minutes a day to write something up without any distractions.
Plan out your posts. Don’t try to just sit down and write a post. Just like programming, the planning portion of your entry is just as important as the actual typing! I cannot stress this enough. When I first started, I would write outlines of what I was going to write. My last couple of weeks, I just wrote stream-of-conscience, and that’s when I realized that my posts were pretty shitty.
The typical how do I start a blog? advice is to have at least 30 posts planned out ahead of time. This will motivate you to continue writing, and it will organize your thoughts to make each post coherent to the next. You don’t really want to jump from HTML syntax to CSS pre-processors and then to a Javascript algorithm. If you’re going to take your reader on a journey through your eyes, have it make sense.
In all honesty, the best part is having the blog as an organizer of notes. It’s super easy to search with keywords, as opposed to going through handwritten notes, and it’s always accessible when you’re programming. Maybe this is the motivation I need to get back into it! 
If you have any specific questions, if you want to float ideas, or if you want to check out my actual shitty blog, feel free to PM me!
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I’m using Facebook Groups and Pages as a repository to post links/pages/thoughts/screenshots on what I’m trying to learn (Right now, trying to learn ASP .NET Core)… it’s sort of like a super Bookmark for documentation pages, tutorials, blog posts, github links that I find useful and pertain to the subject.
And since it’s public on FB, other people may like it, or join the group too to post materials of their own.
I chose FB Groups for this purpose because it’s quick to get started, easy to post new materials and content and does its purpose. I’m not trying to teach anybody, just keeping notes for myself. If others find it useful, and they wanted to join, that’s fine with me too.
I’ve tried started a programming blog a long time ago (for PHP/mySQL), and I just lasted a couple of months… life/work/deadlines got in the way, or sometimes I don’t feel comfortable explaining what I learned… kinda feel like a fraud teaching others new materials that I don’t even quite fully understand.
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keep it simple and use a pre-defined blogging platform until you learn more about coding…then you can ‘roll your own’ as they say and try ghost for example. I’d start with blogger or wordpress.com or squarespace…something free and easily indexable. Spend you renergy on the 100 days, and just write a quick summary to explain to yourself what you’ve learned.
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Thanks for that really insightful input on blogging @drregg6! That was helpful and gave me a reality check. I guess coding and blogging at the same time can be really time consuming, and as you say, I guess it wont be easy to stop coding to start blogging if you are on a roll.
Having planed ahead and maybe prepared a publishing calendar is solid tips. But that sounds a bit difficult in my case. I thought about blogging about my daily challenges and coding. But I guess I should do that in addition to some more juicier posts. My initial thought was this:
- Blog about my daily coding (Like a journal really. Short posts. What did I do? What challenges did I meet? Did I lear something particular? )
- When I finish projects or challenges I could present them and talk about them in a litte bit bigger posts.
- When I need to learn about new terminology, words, definitions, methodology, methods etc. I could write my understanding of it on the blog. It forces me to focus on the theoretical part as well as to better remember. That way the blog would also function as a sort of dictionary. Kinda like Rubber Duck method?
- Every week or every moth I could write a summary.
- Tips and tricks when I come over good videos, other blogpost or articles, books etc.
- In addition to this I could put in some more personal, none coding related posts to break it up a little.
I would also try to be active on twitter, asking questions, following other coders. I have always wanted to blog, but whats always kept me back is the fear of it not being good enough or me not being able to keep up. So I guess I should start by keeping it simple, and try to remember that its a blog for me first and foremost, and maybe it can evolve to something else later on. But I think it would be good for practising writing at the same time as learning to code. Nothing has really inspired me so much as this topic before, so I actually feel that its a smal chance there.
That was a long answer! But its inspiring and cool to have other people to discuss this with.
That was a really good tip @owel! Thats sounds like an easy and simple start, not having to think about maintaining a blog etc. Maybe Google+ is an option too? Maybe not quite the same user base. Thanks a lot for your input!
Thanks for your tips @AdventureBear. That sounds very smart. Its all about keeping it simple and accessible I guess, so that I, as you say, can focus on the 100 days of coding and keep the blog as more of a smal journal.
Well, you can always take a look at my blog for inspiration.
My most important thing to tell you is to get WordPress. Honestly. It makes life a whole lot easier, has a bunch of plugins, and (if you have your own server space), it’s free!
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Thanks @AwesomeIndustry! That portable Raspberry looks awesome. Just bought one myself with the touchscreen actually. That tutorial was cool. Will bookmark. Keep up the great work!
It’s nice to know that my blog has a place on someone’s bookmarks bar! Thanks!
Haha, I really can’t believe how similar our circumstances and ideas are! As long as it motivates you for the 100 Days of Code, and you keep it as organized as you have it planned out, I think you’ll kick ass. The best thing I got out of it was working on projects for the past two months, and even though I’m not writing, I’m still coding so that’s great.
Short posts of daily struggles or what you learned is a great start to the blog. Just keep reading, coding, and learning, and the posts will write themselves! I can’t wait to see the launch and development, so keep me informed
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