Why
The requirements were pretty simple, I wanted a website that I control. The problem with substack and Instagram is that you're bound by other people's platform, I wanted something that I could make bespoke to me.
There are a plethora of blogging sites out there, Medium, Quora and substack to name a few. The rise and fall of MySpace is a notable example, and with the purchase of Twitter by elon Musk, we really don't know where these platforms are heading, or if your content will be there in a few years time. There's also The Reg, a site that's been around for a long time, and an interesting sarcastic take on techie news.
I'm also aware of linked in, which has great support for creating articles, any content you create on their platform is technically theirs.
The Technology
I did look at React, Angular, and other frameworks but as C# developer, Blazor worked for me.
Using Dev Ops, Blazor, Mongo DB, Cloudflare and a virtual server I've managed to create a blog that I can code while on the Tram to work.
Leveraging Cloudflare R2 and a back end service running on my server, I've managed to create a site that takes little hard disk space for hosting my website, and photography.
There are other free tools I've also managed to leverage, a shout out to tinyMCE for their wysiwyg editor, and Razden for their free blazor components.
A lot of the site is just plain old razor components, with bootstrap, however I can practice development with the latest frameworks.
As a commitment to Microsoft and AI, I have managed to leverage tools that are just not available on other blogging sites.
One of the key areas is the Azure Imaging API, I can call this and get AI descriptions, and tags for my image. Saving me time in my image library. I also leverage the Azure Text Summary service, providing shorter summaries for some RSS posts where the content is part of the description.
I also leverage Google maps api, for providing geo tagging information of my photography.
Platforms like Instagram and Facebook have limits on their upload sizes, sometimes I need to leverage high image sizes for my hi res 4k photography.
I didn't just want an Instagram, or a substack, I wanted a bit of both, and leveraging my c# skills, I've managed to create a platform that I own.
Future Features
I have a full dev ops task list of epics, and features I'd like to integrate, and hopefully as time progresses, I'll get to share with the developer community, hands on demonstratable ways to see it in action.
It's probably key to mention that without dev ops, I wouldn't have continuous integration, be able to leverage Git Co pilot for commits, or have a smoke tests in my pre release.
The fantastic thing about dev ops, is that it auto deploys your site after performing analysts on my tests.
I appreciate there are things that both Instagram and Substack can do, that I'm not doing, and this is the challenge I love, can I personally develop something on par with a huge team of devs, and millions of pounds of investment. I don't have the backing of asset managers, I'm developing on a shoestring, and mostly with free tier services.
Moving Forward
I have quite a few ideas I want to implement, some are I believe unique, and others are features that everyone else is doing. There's auto image generation, contextual thumbnails and blog summary generators, I think that it's key to build a blog that leverages AI, and who knows, maybe I'll do it before someone like quora. Medium has a really cool feature, and that is the time taken to read function, hopefully I can implement this.
This for me is why I've created my own platform, not to be better, but to understand and appreciate the work that has gone into these platforms, and understand the code, and the architecture. There are some things that are harder then they look, like trying to get a site that has a decent contextual paint, or effective SEO, or even the previews we take for granted when pasting links, there is work and logic that goes on behind the scenes.
The only way we can only trully really appreciate technology, is by trying to create a real world application with our own hands.
