Build blog site from scratch or use out of the box solution
Hello just discovered IH and though I’d ask a question that’s been bothering me. Forgive me if it’s been asked before, I’m still learning how to navigate this site.
So I’m working on a side project (been on a break since 2 months) and thinking of starting a blog around it so it eventually helps with SEO. Should I go the diy route and build the blog site from scratch or use an out of the box solution?
Diy stack: Nextjs + notion. I could use other recommendations for backend
Ready made solution: looking for recommendations
I've created a bare-bone small blogging platform if you're interested: https://smol.pub.
That’s cool!
If it's fun/enjoyable for you, I'd say go for it. 1-2 days is not a big deal in the scope of things, so if it gives you more energy and pushes you forward towards your goal, go for it.
If you're just using this to procrastinate, then skip it and use a premade solution.
Objectively, it would be a better use of that time to spend writing the blog posts or working on your project.
But, we're all different and what matters most is to do whatever gives you energy, inspires you, and pushes you forward.
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Some other pre-made options you could explore:
Gatsby is great
Ghost.org is great
Potion.so is $8/mo, and it works with notion (I'm sure there are others in this space)
Cheers and good luck
Thank you. Definitely not trying to procrastinate. I got some exciting things to do on the product front. Just don’t want to delay on the blog. Will try gatsby and ghost. Thanks!
Definitely, don't build from scratch as there are some great solutions out there - you'll be up an running in minutes e.g wordpress. Spend the time you save concentrating on writing great posts that are geared for SEO.
They way I see it, I could get nextjs+notion up and running in 1-2 days and it will be under my control. Ive not had the greatest exp with Wordpress from several years ago (not sure if the exp will be diff now). Also which ever path I take, it would need to be permanent cause if I try to migrate things later, Ill lose all the SEO gains ....right?
You can migrate at any stage, just need to ensure everything is mapped and linked correctly, and SEO will be fine. You'll fine the toughest part is writing good content, and getting it to come up in search, and getting readers 🙂