Why blog?

This is the first post on the Gearly blog. I will try to explain why I chose to make it and how I implemented it.

Why?

I always think about new features that I can develop for Gearly that can help its users to have better experience using this app. But this isn't anything that helps them - this will mostly help me (author of Gearly) - to save my thoughts and ideas for my future self. And maybe show them to some of you - readers.

This idea came from Theo . In his video about junior devs he mentioned blog as one of the better ways for juniors to share their journey. And I told myself: why not give it a shot?

I will try to express my thoughts and ideas, write about new features, bugs, what I'm learning as I go and about Gearly itself.

How?

As always - my first step was to ask ChatGPT: "What is the best way to implement blog to Gearly?" I had two options: implementing new module which would use markdown and store it in my DB or use some blogging system. The second one seemed easier and I could learn something new. Hashnode - which I previously never heard of - provides easy way to write blog posts and documents and is focused on devs.

Implementation

This was easier than i thought. I made new account on Hashnode and with few clicks made blog for Gearly. In dashboard panel I set up few preferences and mapped domain gearly.eu to my new Hashnode blog with new DNS record. After few minutes everything was set up and I could start writing this post.

Is it perfect?

I don't know. The site has so many options which would take forever implementing myself. For my purpose it is probably better - I can focus more on new features that Gearly users care.

Written by: Vojtěch Koubek (instead of studying for final exams) | Edited by: GPT-4o