I am writing a blog post about why and how I created my website. It must be one of those cliché blog posts that every internet marketer suggests to write about. Since I am no special snowflake, here is my obligatory How This Website Came Into Existence post.
After contemplating with myself for the past two or three months, I finally made the decision to go live with my own website/blog. The intention was always there – after all the domain name www.kristapsbezbailis.com was bought more than 10 months ago.
The initial inspiration came after I finished reading the book Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk. In his book, amongst many ideas/advice, Gary talks a lot about how your name is your brand and so, you need to treat it that way.
Note: If you don’t know much about Gary Vaynerchuk, make sure you check him out. The guy pumps out brilliant marketing/business/motivational content.
Since then, the personal branding spiel really clicked with me. This is why I bought the domain name and arranged a hosting provider — just to leave it hanging for months.
Everything involved with the website was pretty much stagnant until the big move came about. Unless you’re a connection of mine, you wouldn’t have known that I travelled from Scotland to the USA this summer to be with the wife.
I found myself spending days in the apartment with nothing more than a laptop, sofa and plenty of tea. This is when I caught up with all my projects that I really wanted to do but couldn’t find the time for. One of them things was this website.
So I started working.
First things first…
The reasoning behind the website
Only after purchasing the domain and hosting package for the website, I started to think about the big questions:
- why do I need a website?
- will I be able to keep it updated?
- will it waste more of the internets’ ever-expanding space?
- does anybody even read these websites?
Again, I was thinking back to the concepts Gary went through in his book:
- yes, I need a website because my name is my brand and the website would represent it. By sharing my thoughts, ideas, projects and everything else with an occasional reader I would associate myself with a certain topic of interest.
- yes, I can keep it updated as long as I can publish one article a month or twelve articles per year. That’s not too much to ask. Even the profile information (skills, experience etc.) shouldn’t take longer than updating any social media channel.
- yes, it could waste the space. But what if one of the twelve articles I published helps a single person in some way? That would be worth it alone.
- yes, people still read websites with small audiences (a.k.a. blogs). Some people have different perspectives and others like to read about it – to see the topic/discussion in a different way.
Looking at the odds, the website is destined to flop. But at the same time, there are too many what if questions – what if it takes off, what if it becomes an essential platform to organise my thoughts, what if somebody gets out something valuable out of one of the posts, what if I improve my writing abilities just by 1%?
At very worst, I can tell myself that I had a shot at it to see whether I can do it, right?
First steps
Being somewhat of a tech geek, I was itching to get into technical side – database set up, WordPress installation and configuration, theme search and modifications etc.
So…. that’s what I did. I set up the necessary databases, installed WordPress and started researching the perfect theme I wanted.
After a couple of hours of searching through themeforest.net website and trying out some of the themes, I quickly came to the conclusion that I should create my own theme. After all, I have a good deal of knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. It would be a fun project to work on in my spare time.
Without much hesitation I cracked on.
Since I am no designer, I needed some inspiration. I am a big fan of James Clear and the design of his website www.jamesclear.com (check it out!), so I thought I could try and create my own theme based on his minimalistic design. Over time I could change bits and pieces as I see fit.
It wasn’t as easy as I expected… even for a basic website. My coding was a bit rusty plus figuring out some of the details when creating your own theme had to be thought out. I will probably write a post on how I coded it so people of the Internet can have a dig at me for my bad coding practices and stuff I have forgotten.
Eventually, after almost a week of on/off programming I had a bare skeleton of the website. I had the About page, Basic Blog page that opens individual blog posts and a Contact page. Perfect!
Writing the content bits
I started off writing about myself (result = About). And re-writing. I believe it took me good 4-5 hours before I was happy with short intro.
Note: I have to tell you that writing about oneself is not easy! No wonder I am very impatient when it comes to writing my own CV/resume.
Once I was done with the minimalistic About page, I quickly moved on to the Contact page – done!
Thinking about the Blog section of the website, I wasn’t sure what I would be really writing about (especially for my first blog). After long time of tinkering around the web and looking for inspiration (should I start writing about stuff I am looking to establish myself as an expert or should I pour out my thoughts on the latest Arsenal game?), I came to the conclusion that the best way to start off my blog would be an honest account of why and how I started it all.
So here it is… my first blog post!
Enjoy!