My Boy

Those who been long time (and long lost) readers of this blog know that I started this blog on Blogger.com (in fact the previous version of the blog still exists at https://blogrsh.blogspot.com if you care to check it out). And the poetry blog had been hosted on Tumblr.com (Old Version: https://1000sher.tumblr.com ). I tried to keep both the Blogs simple with maximum focus on the content. While both platforms are quite popular for hosting the Blogs (with Wordpress being the Grand-daddy of them all), I still felt I didn’t have full control on the content and look & feel of sites.

The idea of migrating to a Self Hosted platform had been brewing in my mind for many years. I finally bit the bullet at the start of 2023 and decided to find the alternatives. After some research I finally decided to go with Static Site Generators - Jekyll (for this Main Blog: https://www.ravs.in/blog ) and Hugo (for Poetry Blog: https://1000sher.in ). Again keeping simplicity in mind, I opted for Minima and Paper-Mod Themes. The advantage of using these Static Site Generators is that I get full control on both the functionality and the UX of the websites. So, I have done some customization of both the sites and themes. Github and Gitlab Pages also provide a near perfect platform for hosting the sites.

The idea behind doing all this exercise was so that I am not dependent on any other platform. While Gitlab Github are not a perfectly ‘Self Hosted’ Platform, they do give me freedom to keep my data with myself and easily switch to something else if I don’t like these Platforms in future. Moreover, I am trying to take up the whole control of writing public stuff and keeping personal notes at a single place, so that I use one tool to rule them all.

So, here I am! Trying to restart my blogging habit with a new look and style.

The finished product that you are seeing is a result of countless trials and errors and testing in local environment. The workflow to write the blog and to take it online also involves at least half a dozen steps which I have condensed in a couple of scripts (for each of the blogs).

It took far too long setting things up without producing anything worthwhile. Now, I just hope I am able to write regularly if not frequently, and which will be something that people might enjoy reading. Only then will these hours and hours of efforts will be worth it.

As someone once said :-

“One of the great balancing acts in life is to be cautious and daring at the same time. Cautious enough to avoid stupid mistakes, prevent burnout, and maintain a margin of safety. Daring enough to bet on yourself, to do the things you would regret leaving undone, and to be willing to be uncomfortable in the short term so you can learn and grow in the long term.”

I have tried to reboot my writing hobby so many times in the past. This is yet another attempt. Like you (probably), I am also interested to know how far and where this goes.

I would be glad to hear, if you have any feedback on the new look & feel (and of course the content) of both the Blogs: https://www.ravs.in & https://1000sher.in .

Future plans

Eventually I would like to migrate my old blogs to this new domain. If you can see all the past blogposts on this domain, then it means the attempt was successful!

PS: Picture of my little boy enjoying his ice-cream. Of course he didn’t eat it. He just ‘enjoyed’ it!