Why Build a Personal Website?

The first time I tinkered with a blog was around March or April this year. With Gemini guiding me, I built it step by step.

Back then I thought that was already easy: I don't know tech, and with AI's help I still got it done. But just half a year later, setting up a blog has become dramatically easier again.

My first blog, built on GitHub and Hugo,¹ did work, but there was too little room to customize it. I could basically only copy someone else's theme.

Publishing wasn't convenient either. Most of the time I had to push changes from a local terminal, which I didn't like, and inserting images was a hassle. All that friction left me pretty unenthusiastic about blogging.

Later I tried some third-party hosted blogging platforms, like Bear Blog and Jant Blog. They have proper management, and publishing is super easy, like posting to your WeChat Moments.

They solved publishing, but they couldn't meet many personal needs. Once I wanted something designed a certain way, and it got too detailed, it just couldn't be done.

So it became a case of not being able to have your cake and eat it too.

The more I tinker with blogging, the more I actually like it.

I think a blog is a big business card: visitors can get to know the blogger from every angle. I can post not just articles but projects, photos, and the books and records I love. If I want, I can record all my tastes and my whole life on my blog.

Here's how I see blogging now: it's a vehicle mainly for presenting yourself. It's highly private, and it's nowhere near as public as a WeChat Official Account.

Before this, I'd been using Jant Blog the whole time. It has a few things going for it.

1. A clean design and sensible interactions. 2. Publishing is effortless, like posting on Weibo. 3. It's easy to manage, and the maintainer replies to messages and fixes problems quickly.

I used Jant Blog for a few months. During that time I thought about building my own blog, but I always ended up back on Jant.

There were roughly two reasons:

1. I couldn't find a good-looking theme. I didn't have a complete design concept, and the designs I got from AI mostly looked the same: soulless, not good-looking. 2. Maintenance was a pain. Publishing and managing posts wasn't easy, and there was a lot of friction.

But in the past couple of days, Liang Mouyin recommended a blog theme to me. I thought it was great, really cool, and the author had open-sourced it on GitHub, so I forked it without a second thought.

It's live now. If you're interested, tap "Read the original" to visit.

This time, I combined the theme with the way hosted platforms handle management. I didn't just have AI build the blog. I also had it write a whole admin system along the way, so I can quickly publish and manage every part of the blog from the back end.

All at once, every problem seemed solved.

1. I can change any design detail of my blog myself. 2. Publishing is easy, with no friction.

Suddenly it felt perfect. I'd never thought of having AI write an admin panel before. I always assumed that was something only platforms could do.

Not so. For a personal blog, writing a back end just for yourself is actually simpler.

I suddenly felt like I'd found the ultimate answer.

If all goes well, this blog could keep running from here on.

My requirements for a blog theme are actually simple.

The overall feel has to be minimal. A blog can be rich in content, but good design that makes complex information feel simple is what matters.

The utmost complexity returns to the utmost simplicity. Only a design that feels simple and orderly can stand the test of time.

From a writing point of view, the blog is now mostly a gathering place. It syncs what I've written on my Official Account or elsewhere: after I publish something, I put a copy on the blog too.

Being a collection like this is one of the things that makes a blog special. More private things that I wouldn't post on social media, I often write up and put on the blog.

I may not always write for my Official Account. But even if I stop, the blog should keep getting updated.

Because even if I don't write articles, my photos will still go up on the blog. And even if I give up on both articles and photos, the occasional thought or life update can still go there.

That's what I hope my blog will be.

Footnotes

1. GitHub is a code hosting platform and Hugo is a static site generator. Together they can be used to build a free, customizable blog. ↩