Hello World!

Taking it to the next level: How I redesigned my blog and moved it from WordPress to Laravel.

Today I'm introducing the next version of my blog.

It took me a while to get it done and I ended up migrating everything from WordPress to Laravel to fit my needs.

I haven't written a blog post in a few years, so let's sum things up first.

Once upon a time...

In 2007, I launched my very first website. I was just so excited to be online but then I realized that frames and tables aren't particularly brilliant, so I went back to the drawing board.

Five years later, I launched the blog with WordPress as a CMS and wrote a few blog posts about frontend web development, developer tools, conferences and a lot of open source hardware (mostly Arduino and Raspberry Pi). I released a couple of open source packages on GitHub, got promoted by Smashing Magazine, had the incredible Jon Masterson write a very popular guest post and connected with a ton of awesome people.

What a ride...

In 2018 I rebuilt the front page with Laravel, to display who I am and what I do as a freelance developer.

Now, after this journey of over 10 years, I want to revive the blog to document and share my thoughts on design and development. I always loved writing blog posts, and also liked the balance it gave to my day-to-day work.

Setup

The main website and the blog are now built with Laravel. The articles are stored as individual markdown files in the repository. Additional metadata is placed at the top of the files, formatted as YFM (YAML).

This setup makes it easy for me to maintain and migrate the content and does not require any sort of admin panel or database.

Tech stack

Properly cached, this setup makes the loading time of each individual request basically as fast as a static site.

Designed for speed in the backend and for readability in the frontend, this is a new milestone on this blog's journey.

Who am I?

My name is Sven and I'm a freelance web developer from Germany. I'm involved in the open source community on WordPress Stack Exchange and help with the organization of the WordPress Developer Meetup in Berlin. (You can also find me at the PHP and Laravel meetups in Berlin.)

Having a deep relation with open source software and the web, I'm constantly working on new ideas. I'm also interested in interface­ and interaction­ design and like to tinker with new stuff.

Maintenance and next steps

As you might guess, I have many, many ideas to further enhance this blog. I see this as an ongoing project rather than something with a finish line. In the next couple of weeks, I want to add an RSS feed and focus on new content. I will also try to recreate/­rewrite some of my old posts from the archives.

In the meantime, don't hesitate to contact me via email with any feedback or questions, and feel free to connect with me on Twitter. You can also follow me on GitHub and CodePen.

Update: You can now subscribe to the RSS feed.