Welcome to by blog
Hello and welcome to my blog. In this first post I would like to outline to you, but mostly for myself, what I want for this blog.
I've been wanting to write a blog for as long as I can remember but I've never known what to write about. Since a short while I have been getting into app development with a solid-js and @tanstack/solid-start stack. I've been enjoying this strugle a lot and since I've mainly been bothering my wife with this she figured I might as well start writing online.
Goals
These goals aren't all that set in stone. It's more for myself to have something to work towards.
The first version of this article was just a list of bullet points outlining my goals and a simple wishlist of technical stuff. My first and formost goals is to stop writing bullet lists! I haven't found my own writing style yet, but I do like it when stuff relates to a real-world situation in some form. So let's try that for a while.
In order to motivate myself to make scheduled posts I don't want to restrict myself to topics. One week will involve a lot of app development, another will be mostly devops/infra work. I might even post about more outdoorsy stuff, like hiking or biking. As long as I try to avoid bullet lists.
Metrics
Goals cannot exist in a vacuum, they have to be measured. That's where the metrics will come in. Seeing how most of the stuff on this blog will also involve freedom from big-tech and privacy I want my metrics to be open and transparent as well. Currently I am using plausible as a metrics platform, hosted on VPS. If you are reading this please check it out, if you're not the only visitor send me a screenshot on bluesky @strootje.com
Now for the arbitrairy goals. It would be amazing to get 1000 monthly readers at some point. Maybe 10 newsletter subscribers and find a way for people to interact with these posts via atproto.
Wishlist
1. A plugin like better-auth
I love what better-auth has done for the web space. It's made auth simple to implement and use for people who want to have their data in their own control.
- Simple installable as a package into your project. Use the provided setup and you get a fully typed client-side api to fetch posts, media, newsletters and dashboard data
- Bring your own components/pages/admin
2. Social publishing
I've been reading a lot about the atmosphere and all the different apps based on it.
- I would like to adhere to the website standard for publishing. This way it would be very easy for people to discover my content and interact with it.
- At some point people should be able to leave comments or interactions via their bluesky accounts.
- Allow for guest writers via the atmosphere to publish to my blog
3. Ghost model
Quality content should be rewarded. And my goal is definitly to work towards quality content. I like the model that Ghost.org is promoting where you get newsletters and subscriptions included
- Publish a newsletter from the posts created on this blog
- Integrate (via a plugin) with the CMS plugin
- Allow users to subscribe (for support, for early access to content, for unique subscriber only posts)
In closing
With all of this said, thanks for reading my first post. Feel free to reach out to me via bluesky @strootje.com, any and all feedback is welcome.