So why does this blog exist?

As of this writing, I am migrating a large legacy PHP project from Koseven to Laravel in a startup company.

I want to have a place to share the technical problems we face and the solutions we come up with during the migration. This is one of the reasons I am starting this blog.

Also, a few days ago, I saw Chris Oliver's tweet:

If you can't find the answer to a question after 5-10 minutes of Googling, write a blog post when you find the solution. You'll save yourself and other people a bunch of trouble in the future.

I couldn't stop thinking about it. As a developer, we always expect an existing solution when we google the problems we encounter, but not everyone shares the answers. Chris' tweet is great advice: we should help other people when we receive help online, especially when they may run into the same problems we've just faced.

OK, so what am I going to build it in?

I spent a weekend to rebuild this website, turning it from a personal portfolio to a blog. The original version was built with:

HTML and CSS, Bourbon Neat
Laravel-Mix (to compile the assets)
Hosted on AWS S3 with CloudFront cache

It worked very well, but adding a blog into it is not a trivial task and I wanted to explore and play around with new technology. To get the blog up and running quickly, there's a few options I considered: Gatsby, Next.js, VuePress, Nuxt.js and Gridsome.

From what I understand, Next.js and Nuxt.js are more suitable for large and complex applications, they are a bit overkill for a blog. VuePress is a good choice for the static site and lots of people choose it to build documentation.

But I ended up picking Gridsome, the main reason being that I had VueJS experience in the past, and it provides a starter template which contains all the features I want for my blog. So here is the new setup:

Blogging framework Gridsome
Utility-first CSS framework Tailwind CSS
Content Management System Markdown
Hosting Netlify

Wrapping up

Solving different problems in a startup when it is growing quickly becomes a part of my life. It's a fun, unforgettable and valuable experience. I hope I can share some interesting stuff with you, so we can help each other and grow together.

Lastly, I want to give thanks to Tim MacDonald, who gave an excellent speech at Laracon AU this year. It was great to meeting with him and he encouraged me to get some blogging happening.