The content in this article is purely based on my views that may differ from your opinion. I have no intention to insult or harm anyone directly or indirectly. I am in no way affiliated with hashnode or any other blogging platform and I do not receive any monetary benefits from them.
Hello there! This is the first article here on Genics Blog after I have migrated the old version of this blog from WordPress to hashnode. It has been >3 years since I have been testing different blogging platforms and learning things out of them, their pros and cons.
I started with blogger as my first blogging platform back in 2017. It was pretty straightforward and things were simple. Overall, good for a beginner like I was back then. But soon as someone dives into deeper details of site-making in general, they realize the limits that blogger poses on the blog. Like there are only one or two inbuilt themes that look nice, the older ones are just crap and make one feel like they are in the 90s.
I tried to customize the themes a bit, downloaded some free and pirated ๐๏ธ themes, like trying to make my own theme from scratch, but that was a hell of a lot of work and I was truly lazy to do it ๐
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Then I started looking for an alternative to the platform as things were getting frustrating. We could not even customize the URL and slug of our articles, date and month would always be added to the permalink of the articles, and I hated that. I found some workarounds, but then finally thought to migrate to WordPress.
A year had passed and in 2018, I started researching WordPress and tutorials on it, to migrate my blog there. I learned a lot through the time because now and then there would be some errors, either with database mishandling, or some plugin corrupted, even site hack because of nulled themes. But I learned a good chunk of PHP too, and that helped me later in understanding Android Projects where database services like MySQL were used.
I would give WordPress a good rating for the levels of customizations it provides, also for its UI and UX, it is pretty straightforward too, though it may seem difficult for beginners at first. But I managed to keep up with it and used it for like 1.5 to 2 years. I was okay with the post writing process, but still, certain things ruined the joy of writing articles. When you run a WordPress website or blog, things like web hosting(which was not a hassle in Blogger's or hashnode's case), site maintenance, shaking your head at plugins and themes(which are usually paid if you want the high-quality ones)...
So overall, though it was quite a nice time with WordPress if we look at the short run but the view of the long run is wholly different. A person like me who has been doing that for such a long time would definitely advise anybody, not to host a blog on their own. It is just literally a waste of time and productivity being stuck in useless issues and getting stuck in things that deviate you from your sole goal of blogging or anything else in general. We need to ensure that we don't waste time on unwanted things, rather focus on what's important.
Clearly, that was not the case for me in WordPress. Meanwhile, I again started looking for alternatives and found dev.to, Medium, etc. I won't start roasting everyone lol. But THIS was my genuine concern. No platform gave me enough freedom, that any blogger would want to have.
At last, now I have migrated to hashnode, hoping to get all that I required as a blogger. Seemingly, hashnode got my attention in the first go. It has all the tools that a person requires to blog, and the best part is that it is wholly free!
It provides you with free custom domain integration, of course, article hosting free SSL, AMP service, and much more that you can't even imagine on other platforms. This is what I like the most.
Anyways, I did get way off topic from the context that I will be starting to blog on hashnode from now on. To get things started, I would first migrate all my previous articles from past platforms I used(Thankfully, I had taken backups of my important articles).
For those who don't know, this is a tech and coding related blog. Through it, I wish to share all my knowledge that I have gained over the years. I wish to be consistent this time compared to previous times.
If you have any queries or suggestions, please write a mail to gouravkhunger18@gmail.com and leave a comment below ๐๏ธ. I would love to read your views about the future of this blog.
Thanks for reading up to this point. I am glad that you liked the article! ๐๏ธ