Advice for building my own blog engine

Question

I'm a software engineer and because of a lot of time traveling, have written a lot over the last six months. I'm wondering if building my own blog engine is a worthwhile project. All of the writing I have done so far is private "posts" in markdown that are sitting around on my laptop.My primary motivation to build my own blog engine is to have some fun reinventing the wheel (isn't that what we do best :)), and being able to customize it completely to my workflow. I think an application with a relatively small codebase that's easy to understand and is built for a specific way of working has its own intrinsic benefits.The main requirements are 1. Automatic formatting of files written in markdown to posts 2. Navigation and tagging generated from the files 3. Small surface area for attack. I might go towards static site generation so there is no admin API or dealing with HTTP input. 4. Maybe - nice code syntax highlighting and formattingWith all that said, does anyone have thoughts or advice about building their own blog engine?

alexmingoia · Accepted Answer

Try something new! Take a look at incorporating support for new IndieWeb technologies like Webmention or MicroPub - see https://indieweb.org/Category:building-blocks for a list of tech.I&rsquo;m currently working on incorporating Webmention and MicroPub into https://etch.blog

mooreds · Answer

I wouldn't. Sorry to be a buzz kill, but if I wanted to sharpen my skills, I would either find an open source project to help out on (maybe even a blogging one) or work on a side project that either helped people or had a chance of making money.

sarahfaulkner · Answer

You can learn a lot from explorations like this.It may be a good opportunity to check out some existing solutions to make this easier / that does this for you: Gatsby, StoryForj, Webflow, Bubble.

Advice for building my own blog engine

Try something new! Take a look at incorporating support for new IndieWeb technologies like Webmention or MicroPub - see https://indieweb.org/Category:building-blocks for a list of tech.
I’m currently working on incorporating Webmention and MicroPub into https://etch.blog

I wouldn't. Sorry to be a buzz kill, but if I wanted to sharpen my skills, I would either find an open source project to help out on (maybe even a blogging one) or work on a side project that either helped people or had a chance of making money.

You can learn a lot from explorations like this.
It may be a good opportunity to check out some existing solutions to make this easier / that does this for you: Gatsby, StoryForj, Webflow, Bubble.