Redesigning My Blog

Nov 09, 2023

I’ve decided to redesign my passionately crafted “personal blog” before it even turned a year old. I want to document this process candidly.

Rediscovering What I Want to Do

Getting a job is not the final destination.
‘What do I really want to do?’ is a question we must continually ask ourselves.
Let’s burn our one-time youth to achieve what we desire. The job is just a means to an end.


by 5 months in a startup, and what I gained.

This quote has been a guiding beacon since joining Kakao. Busy with life, this reminder helped me rediscover what I truly want to do.

I yearn to create something simple, clear, smooth, and relaxed. I want these qualities to become a sort of brand identity in everything I touch, and my self-built blog seemed the perfect canvas for this expression.

Reflecting on My Previous Blog

Hence, I felt compelled to revisit my previous blog.

It was a piece made with great effort, and I was satisfied with its softness. However, I sensed an underlying discomforting complexity.

There were several areas of dissatisfaction:

  • The wide gaps between contents led to easy distraction and fatigue.
  • The narrow space between the title and text felt claustrophobic.
  • The content was skewed to the left, making consumption burdensome.
  • The code highlighting differed from vscode, reducing immersion.
  • The variety in font sizes and styles made the UI feel cluttered.

I longed for an extremely simplified screen.

Redesigning the Blog

Just then, I stumbled upon some inspiring figures during my commutes, discovered through Twitter. Paco Coursey, Rauno, and Anthony Fu gave me abundant inspiration. I was burning with passion to create a stunning blog like theirs.

The first step was the “Next.js 13 app directory transition”.

  • Curiosity about the then-new app directory.
  • Taking cues from the robust Next.js 13 project structure of shadcn/ui.
  • Implementing rehype-pretty-code, a more vscode-like syntax highlighter based on shiki.
  • Emulating the sophisticated simple layouts of these artisans.

This led me to rethink content as well.

  • I wanted to more clearly distinguish between writings containing my thoughts and opinions and those conveying information.
  • This differentiation gave birth to Writing and Note.
  • The process involved diligent development → recording discoveries in Obsidian → composing content into articles.

By July and August, the blog had taken shape.

https://bepyan-me.vercel.app/

Addressing each dissatisfaction brought immense peace of mind. Particularly, the example post page was very satisfying. It rekindled my desire to write.

I kept the source code public, hoping it might help someone.

Transitioning to Astro

However, I quickly decided to move platforms. I wanted to include not just writings but also interesting things like dnd-playground (crafts). Although I was eagerly using Svelte at work and wanted to tinker with it, Next.js focused on React, making it challenging to handle code in various languages.

Then, a colleague introduced me to Astro.

  • Optimized for content delivery, it’s just fast.
  • Framework-level support for markdown settings.
  • More intuitive handling of html.
  • Easy integration of different languages through Astro Islands.

I thought, “This is it.” It felt like the pinnacle of MPA. If Brunch were to be migrated to a new framework, Astro seemed highly appealing. Though that day might never come.

Thus, the work began, and by September and October, the blog was newly revamped. I plan to write a separate post about this experience.

That’s how the Craft section was added to the blog.
Additionally, I used the trending bun as the package manager for the first time. It was noticeably fast.

https://bepyan-me-v2.vercel.app/

Furthermore, I added my philosophy and details about the post layout to the example post.

Finally Purchasing a Domain

I bought the domain from Gabia. Compared to other sites, it seemed cheaper and the UI cleaner. I paid 70,000 won for 3 years, considering it like buying a jacket.

https://bepyan.me/

Honestly, I was a bit scared to connect a service to a domain for the first time.
But vercel was a godsend.
Just pasting the DNS info immediately connected the domain.

In Conclusion

Maintaining a technical blog really seems impossible without true love for it. I must continually confront my feelings to maintain this affection. “What do you want to do with your blog?”