Building a Blog - Pt. 1
Welcome back!! Day 2 of being fun-employed!
So I’m building a blog. In fact, it’s this blog! This one that you’re reading! This is my second post!
Why? There are enough voices on the internet.
A couple of reasons:
- Maybe someday I’d also like to be one of those voices on the internet!
- More importantly, I’ve always wanted to be one of the professionals with their own website and a portfolio.
Eventually this page will start to morph into a more static resume/portfolio page - but for now, it’s blog city.
We’re gonna be talkin’ about projects, maybe I’ll do some journaling, maybe if I can buy some new toys I’ll do a product review or something. BUT we gotta start with the actual blog.
Step 1: How the hell do I get a website?
This part is actually pretty easy, and if you’ve watched any YouTube video ever, you probably know what to do. There are only two steps…
- Buy a domain
- Figure out some a hosting provider
Buying a domain is pretty easy - Google “buy a domain” and pick a provider. In the past I’ve recommended Google Domains, but they got bought by SquareSpace so I guess I recommend SquareSpace now? GoDaddy, BlueHost, NameCheap, SquareSpace all seem fine. Just pick the one that makes you feel happy.
Look at those. I wonder what the CPQ is on these keywords…..
On those sites you can submit your desired name, and it will spit out a bunch of options and prices. Lucky for me, I already had maxwellbaum.com so I get to skip this step!
Domains can range anywhere from like $12/year to $100/yr+ - really depending on which Top-Level Domain you choose (.com, .biz, .info, etc etc etc)
Step 2: Picking a hosting provider
A hosting provider is the company that is actually storing and serving up your website files. A domain name is like a phone number, the hosting provider is the person being called.
Just like a domain, there are a million different options for hosting providers - some just provide a place to put your files, others have full on web-builders.
For now I chose Notion but I’ll probably end up moving to something based off of WordPress eventually
Notion as a CMS (Content Management System)
Pros:
- I already pay for it (so basically free!)
- Relatively simple to use (and in a past life I was a Notion Power User)
- Quick!!! I was up and running in like 2 minutes
- Love it for Project Management (which, I’m doin a lot of projects right now)
Cons:
- Where the fuck are the settings
- Dude it so hard to keep track of all my pages and drafts.
- Can’t really do much personalization
- Have to pay extra to use customized domains
Basically - Notion is great because you can just write and go. It’s not great because there’s literally no customization beyond that - but that’s what we like to call a “Future Max Problem”.
I’m a real perfectionist which keeps me from getting things done, to get around it I just have to force myself to ship as early and as often as possible. That means many many MVPs (Minimum Viable Products)
Notion great for an MVP - I can write and get things out of my head and just publish and share right away.
—
V1 is here!
For V1 I made sure I had two things:
- A little snippet about me.
- A first post.
For the post I used a Notion Database and set it up in Gallery View. This allows for some level of searching and sorting, and gives each post a nice lil picture preview.
Notion DBs allow you to name a ton of different properties (just like you’d do an Excel file or something) - and there are some advanced features that I’ll need to dive into to see if I can use it to automate some updates or publishing.
But for now, I write and copy/paste into the Blog DB and then it’s live!
JK! We’re on V1.1 now!!!
I’ve added some extra pages - About, Experience, Blog, Projects, Contact Me
About → Just a lil bit about me
Experience → My resume with some deep dives
Blog → The blog database
Projects → A portfolio of my (soon to be) finished projects)
Contact Me → My email, my LinkedIn, and a Hubspot form that collects email addresses for future newsletter subscribers!
I think the Hubspot back-end is going to be a whole post in and of itself - all the form does is collect emails. I haven’t gotten done with the actual “email sending” part of it. But that’s for another day!
Cheers,
Max