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General Discussion

Owen Schebella
Owen Schebella
4,392 Points
Posted by Owen Schebella
Owen Schebella
4,392 Points

Where to start with making my own first blog?

Hi fellow treehousers! I'm pretty much done with the HTML/CSS modules in the Design Track (not any of the actual design/illustrator stuff) as well as some JavaScript modules and I'm looking to actually try to apply my learning to some real world application. I want to make a blog to show my journey from knowing nothing about web/coding to wherever I end up! :)

Even just stepping away from the workspace and installing my own text editor (Atom 1.0) has been quite a steep learning curve on my own. Doesn't seem to really be something they've covered thus far..

But now I'm already stuck with how I should go about making the blog. I was looking at the Jekyll blog on Github pages and its sliiiightly more advanced than most of what I've covered but it seems like a pretty badass way of getting a blog up and running. It's one thing to have the basics of html and css but now I'm throwing liquid front matter etc into the mix too as well as terminal commands for serving etc.

How do most others do it? Wordpress? Start from scratch with HTML and CSS? Start with a base template and modify it? Any ideas/thoughts and examples from those who have done this would be awesome. Thanks guys!

2 Answers

Jonathan Grieve
MOD
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points
Jonathan Grieve
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points

Wordpress is the most popular medium for creating and maintaining blogs.

You can easily make blogs and websites without writing code using the Wordpress CMS but if you want to learn to write your own themes you can follow the Wordpress Development track. You'll need knowledge of HTML and CSS and at least a basic knowledge of PHP.

Good luck. :)

Owen Schebella
Owen Schebella
4,392 Points
Owen Schebella
Owen Schebella
4,392 Points

Thanks Jonathan. Yeah I want to write the HTML and CSS, that way I can use the blog as a testing ground and grow it as my experience grows too. I don't have any PHP knowledge though and not necessarily interested in writing my own themes per se. Just a way to get my code out into the wild :)

Jonathan Grieve
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points
Jonathan Grieve
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points

I'm currently taking a break from PHP and Wordpress tracks to do some JavaScript but if you want to get a handle on Wordpress and later on Wordpress Development try the following tracks in order

  • Learn Wordpress
  • PHP
  • Wordpress Development

It might be a long road but it'll fire you up with all the knowledge you need to be a Wordpress master :)

Owen Schebella
Owen Schebella
4,392 Points
Owen Schebella
Owen Schebella
4,392 Points

Thanks again Jonathan. So do most wordpress developers design themes to sell on themeforest etc or are there actually large businesses that use wordpress for their sites?

Jonathan Grieve
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points
Jonathan Grieve
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points

I'm not sure about the exact process to be honest, this is something I'm still learning to break into but selling themes is something I'd like to do some day, or even just selling my services to build themes for web projects.

But if creating themes to trade them for profit is something you want to get into them of course this is a worthy goal. :-)

MIke Allen
MIke Allen
9,727 Points
MIke Allen
MIke Allen
9,727 Points

Hey Owen,

The most simple way I suppose is to use WordPress, you can either have it hosted by them at WordPress.com (super simple to setup) or go to WordPress.org download the latest version and install that on your own web server (it will need to support both PHP and MySql.)

The other option is of course to build one your self. Just start really basic and work your way up as you learn more and more. For example you could start building your blog static with just HTML and CSS and you just edit the page when you have something new to say. Then maybe start using JavaScript via arrays and objects to further expand it, which would then loop over the amount of posts you have.

Final part is then to get some server side and database knowledge (like PHP/MySql or whatever takes your fancy) and grow it from there.

Hope that helps a little.

--Quick Edit--

You could also use the blog on codepen.io which is really great for mixing up with any code you have out in the wild. Best of both worlds then. A place to quickly create code, and a blog to yadda about it as well :-)

Owen Schebella
Owen Schebella
4,392 Points
Owen Schebella
Owen Schebella
4,392 Points

Thanks Mike! The codepen.io idea sounds fun! I'll take a look there! :D