Exploring Blogs: How I Got Started

My Blogging Journey: From E-mail to this

I’m not entirely sure if this qualifies as a blog, but for the sake of discussion, let’s refer to it as one. I’ve shared my journey on the About page, but I wanted to provide a few more details for anyone considering a similar path. Just to clarify, nothing here is sponsored; any companies or products I mention are simply stuff I use and may or may not recommend.

I primarily use Obsidian to jot down my thoughts and ideas. Ideally, I’d love to publish my blog notes directly from there. That’s the goal I set for myself. TL;DR: I’m not quite there yet, but let’s rewind a bit to see how I got started.

Baby Steps into Blogging

It all began when I purchased my first domain, primarily to create a custom email address. After using ProtonMail for some time, I found Proton Bridge made it easy to use my custom domain for email. I can use any name before the domain, and all messages still route to my inbox. For example, "anything@mydomain.com" works seamlessly. If I start receiving spam, I can easily set up a filter. So far, I haven’t needed to do this, as I prefer using Proton aliases online, but it's amusing to confuse people like the Lululemon sales person when I signed up for a discount using lululemon@mydomain.com

Building My First Website

Since I already owned a domain, I figured, why not create a website? Inspired by one of my favorite YouTubers, TheNetworkChuck, I threw together a simple one-page website using HTML. It served no real purpose other than as a proof of concept, but I hosted it on GitHub and proudly showed it off to my kids, one of whom even dutifully acted impressed. Nice kids!

A while later, I decided it was time to create a proper blog site. This is where things started to get complicated. I didn’t want to use my existing domain, which includes my family name, so I registered a new one through Porkbun (super smooth purchase process and very responsive helpdesk). Using my initial HTML code as a base, I crafted something a bit more interesting and also hosted it on GitHub. Again ChatGPT did the heavy lifting. While the results weren’t perfect and required some back-and-forth, the new site featured a CSS script, a top menu bar with links, and several pages where I could theoretically post blogs. However, it still looked amateurish, and I wanted something more polished.

We're not in Kansas any more!

It’s fascinating to see how much web design has changed over the years—though I’m not sure it’s all for the better. About 25 years ago, I built a website for my then-employer using Macromedia Dreamweaver and another Macromedia program for images, the name of which escapes me now. It was a breeze! Armed with a book thicker than the Bible, I quickly learned the ropes and was off to the races. The WYSIWYG interface made it incredibly easy.

Fast forward to 2025, when I decided to try out Adobe Dreamweaver again, expecting a seamless experience. I barely recognized it! After a fair bit of Googling, it became clear that I wouldn’t be able to replicate my previous workflow.

This post is getting a bit lengthy, so I’ll wrap it up here and share what I did next in my next entry. Stay tuned!