How I Built My First Blog

I’m incredibly excited to finally share my first developer blog, DevView! This project was born from my desire to have a space I truly own. 😄 I wanted my own brand, which is why I chose to go with Hugo instead of a platform like Hashnode or Medium (I have accounts there too, but I craved full control).

Why I Picked Hugo And Netlify

I picked Hugo over something like Next.js because I wanted to try something new—and I’m so happy I did! Hugo is blazingly fast, and I’ve heard static sites are less prone to hacking, which definitely gives me peace of mind.

Deploying with Netlify was a no-brainer. It’s so simple, and everything just clicks into place perfectly. But let me be real—it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

How It started

It all started when I was following a tutorial on YouTube. The YouTuber stopped at a certain point, and I got completely stuck. I had never used Hugo before—this was my first time! I felt lost and was honestly ready to give up and jump into a new project. But I told myself, “No, you need to finish this.”

MY Biggest Challenge

The biggest challenge was adding a functional search bar. I scoured YouTube for videos on how to do it in Hugo and found nothing. I even asked ChatGPT and DeepSeek if they knew of any tutorials. Still nothing! So I changed my strategy: I asked the AIs directly how to build one. DeepSeek especially came through with some solid guidelines. After some tinkering, I succeeded in making it work with Lunr.js. (I even wrote a post about it!).

That win gave me the momentum to keep going. Next, I added a comment section using Utterances (which hooks right into GitHub issues—so cool!), set up Google Analytics to understand my visitors, and used Formspree to add a super simple newsletter signup without any backend hassle.

It wasn’t easy, but the feeling of overcoming those challenges and having a site that I built exactly how I wanted is unbeatable. That said, I’m still smoothing out a few quirks! For example, my main app.js works for categories and dark/light mode, but doesn’t play nicely with the homepage, search bar, or Utterances yet—so I’m using separate JS files for now. I’ll tackle that later!

Throughout this process, I used AI not to do the work for me, but as a guide to learn and find my own answers. Most importantly, I learned to be patient, stay focused, and not give up easily.

If you’re thinking about building your own blog, just start. You’ll hit walls, but I promise you can break through them. Feel free to check out my site and let me know what you think—I’d love your feedback in the comments! And if you like what you see, please subscribe to my newsletter for updates.