Photo by Julia Taubitz on Unsplash
Fifteen years. That’s how long I’ve been blogging — an eternity in internet years. When I was doing my yearly copyright date change on my site, it hit me just how much time has passed since I published my first post. I decided this milestone deserved some reflection.
How has blogging changed over the years? What have I learned? Would I do things differently if I were starting today?
In this retrospective, I’ll walk you through my blogging journey: from the humble beginnings of hand-coded HTML pages with poorly understood design to the cutting-edge Astro framework that I am thrilled to call my own. I’ll also share insights gleaned from over 1,000 commits to my site’s GitHub repository. Though many, many commits involved wrangling JavaScript’s horrible versioning of dependencies.
Beginnings: Static Simplicity
It all started on January 25, 2010, when my first blog post went live using nothing but static HTML. No frameworks, no automation — just raw markup, a VPC, and a love for writing. In hindsight, it was delightfully simple but utterly manual. Each post required hand-editing HTML, a far cry from today’s streamlined workflows. But it’s also a nice reminder that if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish even difficult tasks.
The Build Tools Era
By September 2013, I had outgrown using hand-coded static files and went to find an easier path. At the time, I have really dove deep into the Python ecosystem; started to feel comfortable with the basics of the language. So I thought I’d start there. Luckily, I discovered Mynt, a static site generator (SSG). Paired with Grunt for task automation, I experienced the magic of simplifying repetitive tasks.
However, this simplicity came with new challenges: dependency management and breaking changes. I now had to understand how packages and requirements worked together. I had a simpler development experience, but there was added complexities I was not use to.
Soon after this change where a lot of my energy was diverted to just writing, I noticed my blog’s look was lackluster. I introduced Bootstrap and FontAwesome in November 2013 — it made styling the blog far easier. It also gave me a broad stylistic language that unified my blog’s look to others I was reading at the time.
To finalize this style a month later, I introduced prism.js for syntax highlighting. This added the last step of unifying my programming focused blog with the top blogs I was reading then. It is surprising on how much confidence a good looking blog does for your motivation to keep writing.
In early 2014, I got swept up in the hype and converted some JavaScript to Coffeescript. While trendy at the time, and I was using it at the startup I worked at at the time; it didn’t age well. It was a lesson in balancing innovation with practicality — shiny tools can quickly lose their luster.
Constant Evolution
The next few years were full of experimentation. In mid-2014, I moved from Mynt to Pelican and adopted Sass for better CSS organization and customization. Then came a shift from Grunt to Gulp, which was one of my first case of chasing technologies when I already had something that worked. Everything was smoother and faster. These years taught me the importance of refining my build process for performance and simplicity. Taking small steps to refining versus overhauling my workflow.
In 2015, I added a sitemap and made my blog more search engine friendly. Around the same time, I celebrated a career milestone and updated my job title. These small moments highlighted how blogs aren’t just about content—they reflect our personal and professional growth.
Entering the Modern Era
The rise of JavaScript-based static site generators led me to Gatsby in 2018, where I embraced React and the promise of fast, dynamic websites. It was a significant leap forward, bringing dynamic content and modern JavaScript frameworks to my blog. By 2019, I even rolled my own image optimization using Sharp.
However, I ran into roadblocks. Adding RSS seemed straightforward but turned into a saga of failed attempts until June 2020, when I finally got it working. Shortly after, I introduced MDX and added long-overdue pagination. MDX was a rare occurrence where chasing the new technologies really opened my eyes to how the user was able to experience my blog. I didn’t realize how limited I was with just using Markdown files for each blog posts. MDX allow me to add more features and experiences for my readers driving to a better overall experience.
Astro and the Future
By 2021, I was ready for another change. I switched to Astro, a framework designed to optimize performance by shipping only what’s necessary to the browser. TailwindCSS brought sleek, efficient styling to the site. Since then, I’ve stayed on the cutting edge, upgrading through Astro versions recently upgrading to v5 in late 2024. I feel like I am in the early days of my blogging experience. I no longer feel a burden of the optimized workflow slowing me down. I can lean on Astro and write. Knowing I am being supported by a wonderful SSG framework.
Lessons from 15 Years
- Iteration Drives Growth: Small improvements, compounded over time, can lead to big transformations. My blog’s evolution is proof of the power of incremental change.
- Chasing Trends Can Be Risky: Technologies like Coffeescript taught me to evaluate whether new tools truly solve a problem — or just look exciting.
- Automation Is Key: From hand-coded HTML and CSS to a powerful tool like Astro, every upgrade has aimed to simplify creation and improve performance. This allows me to focus more on what I wanted with this blog — to write.
Looking Forward
As I step into my 16th year of blogging, I’m eager to see where technology will take us next. Though as of right now, I am very happy with Astro and don’t see a reason to move on just yet. The tools and frameworks will continue to evolve, but the core lessons remain timeless: stay curious, iterate often, and never stop learning.
Here’s to the next 15 years of blogging.