So I follow an ever increasing group of websites/blogs/forums using RSS and tend to separate them through categories (programming, devops, health, osx, etc..) but every now and then I end up liking certain sites more than the others because of the content they’re producing, the work they’re sharing or even just because I love their website design. The following blogger ends up hitting all three of those variables for me. The guys name is Kev Quirk and he constantly puts out interesting stuff in addition to having a very well designed website. So much so that I plan on blatantly ripping off an idea from his site that he’s done perfectly which is having a call-out button at the end of each post to reply via email. If you ever end up seeing this, thanks for the idea. Here’s the button I’m referring to taken from his site:
reply by email button

So like him, I’m not a big fan of meta posts. Most of the time it just reeks of a faked interest to drive up site engagement but if you’re familiar with some of Kev’s work you’d know he’s pretty genuine about his intentions and a big believer in community building/indie-web. So he’s adopted a similar blog question challenge that he came across on another blogger you should also be following (Brandon’s Journal ) called the Bear Blog Question Challenge. Also not being in the BearBlog network (which btw is a great micro-blogging system if you’re in the market for one) I figured I’d join him in answering his questions on here. So here we go:

My Answers To The Challenge:

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I was brought up around the time the internet was becoming more and more accessible on the consumer level and was lucky enough to have access to it while still in middle school. I think I was using MySpace and a few sites like Geocities to post random stuff I’d come across from alternative uses for AOL CDs to strategy guides for the games I was playing to really just anything (lots of song lyrics and what I thought they meant type posts). I didn’t actually start a ‘real’ blog until probably 2006 after graduating college. I was working in the advertising industry and had a lot of opinions on what was going on, ideas of what would be cool to see, etc.. I had taken on the online handle Brentter (aka my first name and the first three letters of my last name) a year or two earlier so naming it was easy - Everythings Better With Brentter. That quickly turned into not only a personal blog but an advertising industry blog as I was posting sometimes 3-4 times a day with campaigns I’d find or even be sent directly by production companies.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?

This site is currently using Hugo and I chose it because I’d read nothing but great things about the speed at which huge Hugo sites could load. By the way it’s 100% true. It’s insanely fast not only to load the pages (because they’re flat files, not dynamically generated every time a user visits the page) as well as incredibly fast to compile the site when you’re ready to push an update to it. I’d been messing around with the go language for the past 2-3 years and that’s what Hugo is written in so I thought why not?

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

Yes. So prior to my first ‘real’ blog those platforms were mainly HTML/CSS based pages with no real structured CMS system, then with brentter.com it was initially built on some wiki software which for the life of me I can’t remember. That lasted about a year then I switched it over to Wordpress, which I had heard was just a new fork of another CMS named b2 (that I liked). Over the years of running that blog I’d dabble in little side projects using blogger and tumblr but ultimately stuck with Wordpress until I shut the site down somewhere around 2016/2017.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

So unlike my experiences with Wordpress, where I would either draft them in the WP back-end or use a 3rd party application that would help me manage the blog content better (Using the xml-rpc protocol), I write my posts using a great app called Sublime Text. I’ve been a fan and paid user of this application since it first came out and it’s only gotten better over the years. Hugo relies on pages or posts having what’s called front-matter. It’s a bit that goes at the top of everything you want to add to your Hugo site which indicates all the meta data as well as instructions on how my settings on the platform should render the page. So I have a couple of pre-made templates that I pull up in Sublime and that let’s me pretty quickly get working on something new. It’s a pretty easy to use setup. I then use git to push it to GitHub which then in turn triggers it being compiled and sent off to CloudFlare where I host brentter.com.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

Usually after reading or coming across something interesting, or at least something I think others would find as interesting as I do. So for instance I’m writing this probably 20 minutes after having read the post on Kevs blog. Though in this case it’s not because I think anyone cares about how this site is made or my thought process behind it, but rather because I like the idea, enjoy Kevs blog and want to participate. This is one of those few “this is for me” type posts. I have a bunch of post ideas lined up with a bunch of research that was needed to properly explain the content but those aren’t quite ready yet. Those got started right after getting the idea for them. I’ve got ADHD so the faster I act on an idea that I like the better chances of it seeing the light of day.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

Well this time around for my blog on this domain I tend to just publish immediately after double checking images, grammar, links, etc.. which leads me to another great feature of using Hugo is it has a built-in dev server so as I save changes I can view my updates in real-time before pushing live. On the old site I would tend to save the posts as drafts then give them a once-over before going to bed in case my tone was too strong in a negative direction when talking about other production companies or ad agencies. I didn’t want to unnecessarily burn bridges with a wild hot take and by then I’d usually have another idea or two to add.

What’s your favorite post on your blog?

So this version of the blog is still very new so I don’t have that many posts yet. In fact, I don’t really have any of my older style of posts that were long-form and tended to spend significant time arguing whatever my current point of view on a subject was. That being said I’d have to go with my post on adding a recently played music page to a Hugo blog. I threw it and the code together pretty quickly because it was something I wanted to add on here then quickly re-wrote the entire thing about a week or two later to incorporate it into a much bigger project I have yet to release. That’ll come out soon enough but basically it’s a homegrown scrobbler to track not only recent music but also bookmarks, starred reps, notes, exercise logs, movies, etc.. Writing that post is what gave me the idea for it and I’m pretty happy with the result no matter how basic the approach to it was. It goes back to something a favorite teacher once told me that “Success is not about the results from a first attempt, it’s about the progress you make after it.”

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

So this being my first foray into using Hugo I went with a pretty basic theme that by now has been modified drastically for various features behind the scenes. While I like it, I know I can do better so I have been working on a new design using what I’ve learned about how the Hugo framework operates. An obvious new addition will be an email to reply button as mentioned earlier in this post. I also plan on having it incorporate more of my data to expand this from being just a blog to more of a personal info-garden.

So that’s it. Simple enough, while I don’t have anyone in particular in mind to tag (which is know is part of the whole concept of these meta-posts), I hope you go and check out both Kevs and Brandons blogs which are linked above. If you’re interested in joining us in this little mini blog challenge you can find more about it on Kevs Blog Questions Challenge page.

Cheers,
Brent