I saw [Manu's post](https://manuelmoreale.com/blog-questions-challenge) in my RSS feed this morning answering these questions and thought, why not?

**1. Why did you start blogging in the first place?**

I answered this question when I was featured on [People and Blogs](https://manuelmoreale.com/pb-dalton-mabery), and liked my response so much that I'll quote it here:

> I love history and I noticed that most of the influential figures in history had some sort of publishing habit—Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill wrote biographies; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was a prolific essayist and writer before he became a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Other notable figures either wrote prolifically in [journals](https://bookshop.org/p/books/steinbeck-a-life-in-letters-john-steinbeck/967840##) and diaries or published in magazines. Creating a blog was my way of following in their footsteps.

**2. What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?**

My blog is hosted on Vercel and it's powered by NextJS. I wrote the code from scratch, which is what's keeping me here. There is something—maybe its ego—that *loves* the fact that I built my own little home on the internet that I fully control. I write my posts in markdown and push the changes to GitHub.

I chose this route because I wanted to learn teach myself how to code, and having a project to work on was the perfect way to do that.

**3. Have you blogged on other platforms before?**

Honestly, no. I built a few sites on Squarespace and WebFlow, but I've never really "blogged" on another platform consistently. However, there was a period of time where I used WordPress as a headless CMS to power this blog. I liked using WordPress because of how easy it was to write new posts and add images to them. But there was always this nagging fear of losing all of my posts somehow.

That said, I *really* like [Pika](https://pika.page/). I've debated switching there many times. I've read countless posts about how easy the platform is to use, and how it gives you just the right amount of customization. Really, the only thing keeping me from moving is that proud feeling I have that I blog on a site built from scratch. I have this imagination where I'll be talking to someone and they'll be impressed that I built my blog from scratch and hire me. I know in the development world, a self-made blog is table stakes, but that's not the case in the legal field.

However, I'm using Pika to share short quotes and ideas from books I'm reading. I post the full notes on this site, but sometimes it takes me a year to get around to typing up the entire book. So, I wanted a space where I can share quotes as I read them, and Pika is a good place to do that so far.

**4. How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that's part of your blog?**

I currently use Obsidian, but I used iA Writer's free trial and *loved* the experience. The editing and grammar tools were awesome, and the interface is really nice. However, I just don't want to fork over $50 on a tool that's similar to Obsidian.

**5. When do you feel most inspired to write?**

Right after I learn something new or read a quote that I can't not share with others.

**6. Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?**

Publish immediately. This is my personal blog, not the *New York Times*. I can always edit later!

**7. What's your favorite post on your blog?**

[Don't Create a Horse Storm](https://www.dltn.io/posts/dont-create-a-horse-storm).

**8. Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?**

Always! I actually like the current design a lot. It's simple and clean. I've debated using a serif typeface, and I have one I really like, but whenever I test it out in development, it gives too much of a serious vibe to the site.

As mentioned, I'm *debating* moving to Pika. The fact that I don't own the content, and the feeling that it's cool to have built my own blog, are the two things that are stopping me. Perhaps when I'm a busy lawyer (hopefully!), and realize I don't have time anymore to tinker with my blog, I'll make the switch.

Blog Questions Challenge


One of the reasons I’ve been tempted to switch—and in fact have switched a few times (and then back again)—to WordPress as a headless CMS was because of how dead simple and easy it was to write a new post.

I clicked the link in my bookmark, threw a title on the page, wrote, and published it. It was not a technical process, and that made it great. Also, adding images was *so* much easier in WordPress than uploading an image to Cloudinary and copying the link to embed it in a markdown file.

But I never quite felt good about using WordPress. Partly because I like the “cool factor” I feel from the fact that I built a blog from scratch and write in markdown files—like I’m some tech nerd or something. Part of it was the permanence thing; I want my blog to be around in fifty years, and I don’t know if WordPress will be! (Who knows if Vercel will be either, but switching a server provider seems easier than having to migrate decades of posts.)

What I *didn’t* like about writing in markdown files was having to either open a dev server to check new posts, or wait for my site to build to make sure I closed the front matter properly or something.

But[ then I saw Jim’s post which I stole the title of](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/markdown-sans-front-matter/), “Markdown sans front matter.” He explained adding front matter in his posts was distracting and complicated the authoring experience. I agreed. So, I searched his code and looked at how he was interpreting the metadata of a post without front matter and thought what he did was brilliant.

I love his reasoning:

> The perfectionist in me sees it as a “pure” markdown document. It's simple, I like it. Every time I start (or finish) a post, I don’t have to worry, “What metadata do I need to add again?”

He basically puts the date in the title of the file and the parses that out of the final /slug. The first H1 in the document becomes the title, and any # become tags.

With the help of ChatGPT (and some frustration and coffee), I was able to get something similar working. So now, I can write a post that looks like this, which is *super* easy.

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dde1q4ekv/image/upload/v1727634949/Screenshot_2024-09-29_at_11.34.51_AM_tpzumv.png)

Or for more complicated posts, or my book notes, like this.

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dde1q4ekv/image/upload/v1727634949/Screenshot_2024-09-29_at_11.35.07_AM_fgotj1.png)

Thanks, Jim!