write blog post

content/blog/i-have-a-blog.md

@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+---
+title: "As you can see, I have a blog"
+date: 2021-08-15T14:12:57+01:00
+draft: false
+hero: 'https://img.eartharoid.me/insecure/pr:1080p/plain/s3://eartharoid/images/p/danist-bviex5lwf3s-unsplash.jpg@webp'
+images:
+  - 'https://img.eartharoid.me/insecure/pr:1080p/plain/s3://eartharoid/images/p/danist-bviex5lwf3s-unsplash.jpg@webp'
+# tags:
+#   - ''
+---
+
+Hey, you're reading my blog! I thought it would be cool to have a blog as part of my new website, but I didn't have any plans for the content. I thought about it a little, considered holiday diaries etc, and decided that I don't want it to be too personal, which means it will probably be developer-focused content. Maybe I'll write regularly, or maybe I'll forget about it for a while and write an occasional post about how I made something new.
+
+I don't think I'll use this blog for announcements for my established projects, more for general topics and new projects that may interest more of the 0 people who are going to read it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

content/blog/my-new-website.md

@@ -1,12 +1,61 @@
 ---
-title: "My New Website"
+title: "My new website"
 date: 2021-01-19T11:59:41Z
 draft: false
 # hero: ''
-images:
-  - ''
+# images:
+#   - ''
 tags:
   - 'websites'
 ---
 
 ## Why I made a new website
+
+I started messing with basic HTML and CSS in 2016 and I have had a home page since at least 2019, probably 2018, but it was just an [HTML5 UP](https://html5up.net/) template. Whilst it looked ok-ish, it was slow and had very little information, only some unoptimized photos (uncompressed and 4K) and links to other pages.
+
+Although I am writing this in August 2021, I started making this website in early January. I'd like to say that I thought I should have a somewhat professional-looking website to showcase my software and photography for potential customers, but honestly, I was just looking at static site generators (I can't remember why) and was interested by [Hugo](https://gohugo.io). A few hours later I was learning how to make my own Hugo theme (using what I now know is a disgusting template engine).
+
+
+## Website requirements
+
+Despite suddenly diving in to the website creation, I had been thinking about what I want my website to look like and the features I wanted it to have for at least a year. I knew that I wanted a full-page background image to be the first thing you see on the home page, and I also wanted a hero (the section at the top with navbar and title in front of an image) on every page.
+
+I had thought about some features:
+
+- Individual pages for all of my major projects
+- A blog, although I'm not sure what for
+- A photo gallery
+
+## How it works
+
+I chose to create my website with Hugo and Bulma, and host it on Vercel.
+
+### Why I chose Hugo
+
+I don't really know. I had been thinking about trying Go for a while, I was looking at Hugo's website and just decided to use it. 
+
+### Why I chose Bulma
+
+I have used Bulma for small things in the past so I know that it is easy to get a somewhat decent-looking website with not much effort. I learned that Bulma and themes I used (Flatly and Darkly) are not perfect though.
+
+### Why I chose Vercel
+
+I wanted fast and free hosting. I was considering using Vercel for another project and I decided it would be a good idea to test it with something easy to migrate away first.
+
+## The development process
+
+### January
+
+I begun creating my website in early-mid January (2021). Between the 9th and 25th January I made most of the theme and the website was ready for content. However on the 26th I started making [eartharoid go](https://github.com/eartharoid/go), leaving the website in an incomplete state with no content.
+
+### August
+
+Skip forward half a year, I had just got back from my holiday when I decided to setup my Ko-fi memberships. I then created [a blog post on Ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/post/Memberships-L3L85MG7T) announcing this. Minutes later I realised that the website I made months ago has a blog waiting to be used.
+
+I started (on 8th August) by writing my home and about pages. A couple of days later I was adding more to theme, including improved meta tags (social embeds), taxonomy pages, adding a contact form and lots of little changes. I then decided to replace [Imagekit](https://imagekit.io/)-  the image CDN I had set up in January - with my own CDN (`static.eartharoid.me`, using Cloudfront and S3) and [image proxy](https://imgproxy.net/) (`img.eartharoid.me`, behind Cloudflare's CDN).
+
+## What I'd do differently next time
+
+I found creating my own Hugo theme very frustrating at times. Hugo's features make it look like the easy option for getting a static website running, especially one with a blog, but the template engine is awful and I found it limiting. [Hexo](https://hexo.io/) is a potential alternative which I may consider using in the future, but I think I am more likely to use [Next.JS](https://nextjs.org/).
+
+I don't regret using Bulma. Although I probably won't use in my next personal website, it made this website much easier and faster to create.