As developers, we may find it interesting and tempting to have a blog or an online portfolio as it helps us to have more online presence and allows us to have a space to show what we do, what we know or our previous work. In this post, I am going to recommend 3 tools to create your website so you can choose the one that best suits your needs and knowledge.
Hashnode, the easiest one to implement
Hashnode is a blogging platform for developers that allows you to publish articles on your domain and be connected to a global community of developers. You can create a personal or team blog on your domain for free without sacrificing visibility, reach and total independence of your content and canonical. You can also read articles from other writers, interact with them, follow your favourite tags and participate in writing challenges. For example, this post has been written in Hashnode
Pros
You can use your domain for free without sacrificing visibility, reach and total independence of your content.
You can read articles from other writers, interact with them, follow your favourite tags and participate in writing challenges.
There are no ads or paywalls on Hashnode, and you can write in markdown with a powerful, easy-to-use editor.
Cons
You may encounter some low-quality or spammy articles on Hashnode, as there is no strict review or moderation process.
You may find it difficult to migrate your content to another platform if you decide to leave Hashnode, as there is no built-in export option.
You may lose some features or functionalities that other blogging platforms offer, such as advanced statistics, social media integrations or design customisation.
Notion + Super, winning combination
Notion is a platform that allows you to store and manage your content easily and flexibly. You can create text pages, databases, dashboards and much more, while Super is an online service that allows you to create and edit websites using your Notion account, without the need for coding. Notion takes care of the content editing while Super takes care of everything else, such as styling, caching, SEO and domaining. Here is my blog hosted by Super to give you an idea of what the final result looks like.
Pros
You can use Notion as a CMS, which makes it easy to edit content.
You can connect your domain and have an SEO-optimized website with automatic SSL.
You can customize the style of your website with custom code and templates.
Cons
You need to pay a monthly or yearly subscription to use Super, in addition to Notion if you exceed the free limit.
You do not have full control over the design and functionality of your website, as you are dependent on Notion's features.
You may experience some synchronisation or performance issues if Notion is down or slow.
https://www.notion.so + https://www.super.so
Create your website from scratch
This is the most challenging and interesting for software developers because it not only allows you to put into practice the knowledge acquired over time but also shows others the capabilities of the creator, for this you can use several technologies.
Pros
You have full control over the design and functionality of your blog, and you can customize it to your liking.
You learn more about web programming languages and develop your coding skills.
You make your blog more secure and less vulnerable to attacks, as you don't use generic or shared code.
Cons
You need to have prior knowledge of web programming or spend time and effort learning it.
You need to invest more resources to create and maintain your blogs, such as a code editor, a web server and a domain.
You need to manually update your blog every time you want to change something or add new content.
If you still want to program your blog from scratch, I have for you this tutorial on how to create it using Markdown and Dartfrog, I hope you enjoy the process.
PS: The tutorial post is not ready yet, so I will post the link soon, wait for it ;)