Blog Welcome to the new updown.io blog 🎉

For a while I've been thinking of "starting a tech blog". Well technically I already started one a while back on Medium, but I didn't like Medium because of the—let's say poor—reader experience so I didn't want to write on it nor to promote it. I saw many blog tech and hosting platform rise (and die) in the following years, everytime telling myself: "maybe I should just use this one?" and sometimes "well I'm glad I didn't".

In the end I never did because it always felt cumbersome having this on a separate website, hostname, design, and:

• Having to learn another tool, its quirks, host it, secure it, upgrade it
• Or having to pay for a hosted service and deal with the forced updates, price hikes, password policy, ToS update emails, etc..

For the small traffic and content that I expect on my blog it didn't seem worth it. So in the end I waited thinking I'll probably integrate the blog directly into the updown.io website later. And well, this time has come 🎉

I took the opportunity while implementing the new internal Documentation & FAQ section to also re-use the same admin & editor for the blog posts because they have similar needs. Both are sharing as much code as possible (markdown, editor, attachements, permalinks, search, CSS, etc..)

To me the big advantages of doing this internally are:

1. I can easily re-use the existing design system and layout, giving the blog a nicely integrated look.
2. I can make sure it's lighting fast and does not include any bullshit like ads, tracking links and stuff.
3. No dependency on any third party, everything in the same majestic monolith, 100% customizability.
4. I can use the existing authentication to let people ♥ like (see bottom right) and maybe later comment without having to create any separate accounts! This is the case for our UserVoice feedback tool for example (link in footer), and I hate it. I hope to also internalize this later.
5. I can benefit from all my usual production tooling (e.g. staging environement, database sync locally)
6. I'll be able to re-use this also for release notes maybe? (replacing the headway widget), this would help streamline even more and reduce the number of services gravitating around.

I imported the first two legacy Medium articles and will now start writting some more when I feel like it (don't expect too many though 😅). Feel free to add the RSS to your reader if you use one. And let me know if you have any feedback or suggestion (by email for the moment), you can use the link just below.

Created on November 04, 2023 · Last update on November 05, 2023