Just published my coding blog!

Congrats on the blog. It's off to a great start. I like the clean design and the first article is original and interesting.

As mentioned in comments below, I would recommend getting it served by https since that is only going to get more important going forward. Also, when I switched my blog over to https, it messed with my google analytics so starting out first will save headaches in the future.

I'm not sure where you are hosting it but you should also think about using gzip compression. I found that helped with my bandwidth costs and speeds up the site. It's not an issue when you get started but as traffic grows, you'll be happy you figured it out early in the process.

I also agree that getting content out there is the most important thing. Be consistent but don't feel too much pressure. It is a marathon not a sprint.

When you are interested in promoting your content, here's what I typically do:

Post the link on reddit /r/python. It may take some time for you to figure out what works but this is a good place to start and get some traffic and feedback.
You are posting on twitter which is good. That's a good place to get traffic once you build up a following. It will take time but keep it up.
You can have your RSS feed posted here - https://planetpython.org/
Since you're doing data science type topics you might want to post here - https://www.datacamp.com/community
Finally, you can post your content on dev.to as well and provide a canonical link to your site.

Once you post in those forums, your content will likely get picked up in the various python newsletters like https://www.pythonweekly.com/.

As far as content goes, you'll likely need to experiment with how many articles to write and how in-depth you want to be. My opinion is that it is important to have a plan for how you want to post but don't get too hung up on it. If your ideas and interests change, don't be afraid to follow them.

One thing I don't see mentioned very often is that the actual time of day and week matters when you post. You will find that your peak traffic will be Mon-Thurs with Fri-Sun likely being the slow times. That's why I like to post early in the week, typically in the morning for maximum views.

Finally, most of the traffic to your blog is going to be from the long tail of google searches. It's easy to get a short term bump in traffic but much harder to sustain it. Some of it is a bit out of your control but hang in there and you'll realize slow and steady growth over time if you keep up.

Say something nice to ribab…

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Congrats on the blog. It's off to a great start. I like the clean design and the first article is original and interesting.

As mentioned in comments below, I would recommend getting it served by https since that is only going to get more important going forward. Also, when I switched my blog over to https, it messed with my google analytics so starting out first will save headaches in the future.

I'm not sure where you are hosting it but you should also think about using gzip compression. I found that helped with my bandwidth costs and speeds up the site. It's not an issue when you get started but as traffic grows, you'll be happy you figured it out early in the process.

I also agree that getting content out there is the most important thing. Be consistent but don't feel too much pressure. It is a marathon not a sprint.

When you are interested in promoting your content, here's what I typically do:
- Post the link on reddit /r/python. It may take some time for you to figure out what works but this is a good place to start and get some traffic and feedback.
- You are posting on twitter which is good. That's a good place to get traffic once you build up a following. It will take time but keep it up.
- You can have your RSS feed posted here - https://planetpython.org/
- Since you're doing data science type topics you might want to post here - https://www.datacamp.com/community
- Finally, you can post your content on dev.to as well and provide a canonical link to your site.
Once you post in those forums, your content will likely get picked up in the various python newsletters like https://www.pythonweekly.com/.

As far as content goes, you'll likely need to experiment with how many articles to write and how in-depth you want to be. My opinion is that it is important to have a plan for how you want to post but don't get too hung up on it. If your ideas and interests change, don't be afraid to follow them.

One thing I don't see mentioned very often is that the actual time of day and week matters when you post. You will find that your peak traffic will be Mon-Thurs with Fri-Sun likely being the slow times. That's why I like to post early in the week, typically in the morning for maximum views.

Finally, most of the traffic to your blog is going to be from the long tail of google searches. It's easy to get a short term bump in traffic but much harder to sustain it. Some of it is a bit out of your control but hang in there and you'll realize slow and steady growth over time if you keep up.
cmoffitt

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7 years ago
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Congrats on starting your blog! At this stage posting more is probably the best advice. Maybe start a mailing list?

That QuadArt you did with the apple looks really cool. How did you create the gif that shows a loading bar?

Tobe

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7 years ago
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  For the loading bar gif I first used xwininfo to get the dimensions of the loading bar terminal, then I used byzanz to record the terminal. I ran byzanz from another terminal
  
  ribab
  
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  7 years ago
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  1. 1
    
    Thanks by the way, I'm going to add that info to my blog post :)
    
    ribab
    
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    7 years ago
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1

Hi Richard! (Or can I say Ricky 😬)

The blog looks neat, I like the way the code embeds look with the template!

One piece of advice I want to give is setting up https properly. In 2019 where browsers show "not secure" for http connections, this is quite crucial. (Even more so when tech-savvy people are your audience) This will also be beneficial for SEO, which is an important source of traffic for coding blogs.

Are there any particular fields of computer science you will be blogging about?

Best of luck with the blog!

Nebulic

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7 years ago
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