Welcome to my blog.

Why not Medium?

It is 2023 and there are plenty of easy ways to create content about ML, Data Science and AI on the internet. In fact with the accessability of platforms like Medium it is super easy.

Isn’t it actually dumb to create your own blog instead of using these possibilities?

Maybe, but my purpose is not to attract as many readers as possible but to learn something and make my learnings accessable for others.

Well, couldn’t you have done this also on Medium?

I tried, but starting to create content i saw some pitfalls with Medium:

The writing interface is straightforward and easy to use but it is actually too simple and gives almost no flexibility.
Medium attracts a lot of good writers but also a lot of people just producing content with low quality. If you don’t optimize your articles you won’t attract any readers. So for my purpose there is no difference whether i use a private blog or Medium.
Medium does not support Math Formulas! I could not believe it but there was no decent possibility to include math formulas with Latex or somehow else. An absolute No Go in my eyes

Ok i get it, Medium is not for you but a blog is a lot of maintenance and effort. How do you find time for this?

Luckily it is actually quite easy to create your own static site with Github Pages and Hugo.
Also it is a good chance to learn somehting new and make yourself familiar with web design again.

Ok, i am curious. How did you do it?

How did you create your blog?

Which tools are you using for your blog?

As written, i use Github Pages and the open-source static site generator Hugo which is written in Go. (I chose Hugo without having done a lot of research. There are other generators like e.g. Jekyll but Hugo was open-source, easy to use, blazing fast and free so no need to look further).

And how did you do actually do it?

Install Hugo
```
 brew install hugo
```
If you have a different system than MacOS check the official installation guide.
Create a new site in Hugo

When you decide on a name, think that the name is also the folder and the name of the Repo. To work with Github Pages it needs to have the same name as your git user followed by .github.io
```
 hugo new site <user>.github.io -f yml
```
I decided to use PaperMod theme and it recommends to use .yml Config instead of .toml - and i am fine with that because i like yaml files.
Install your favorite Hugo Theme

The project is created but if you try to run it, it will just be an empty page. A style is needed to make it fully functional.

You could create one from scratch but Hugo has a bunch of themes already prepared and ready to use! You can go to https://themes.gohugo.io/ and choose a theme you like. I like PaperMod
```
 git init
 git submodule add --depth=1 https://github.com/adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod.git themes/PaperMod
```
Adjust your config.yml with theme: PaperMod
```
 baseURL: http://<user>.github.io/
 languageCode: en-us
 title: My New Hugo Site

 theme: PaperMod    
```
Create Content

Important is your content folder. The folder tree in this folder will reflect your site folder tree. Either you create folders and markdown files in those folders manually or you use
```
 hugo new
```
e.g.
```
 hugo new /content/posts/first-post/first-post.md
```
I would recommend to create a folder per post to store your pictures in the same folder as your post they relate to
```
 ---
 heading: "Welcome to my blog"
 subheading: "This is my first-post"
 ---
```
Look at your new site

With
```
 hugo
```
you create the html out of your content in your public folder. Please keep in mind that for Github Pages you can only choose docs as your root directory for your index.html. Therefore you need to add following config to your config.yml
```
 publishDir: docs
```
With
```
 hugo server -D
```
you can see the site on localhost with port 1313. -D is used to include drafts.

Push to github

Now you can push your site to github

 git add .
 git commit -m "initial commit"
 git push origin main

Configure Github Pages In your repo settings under Pages the root folder needs to be adjusted and your site will hopefully be deployed soon.

With this short introduction you should be able to set up your own blog really fast and in worst case troubleshoot your way through. Enjoy!

PS: In Germany you have to add an imprint and a privacy policy to your website if it is not for friends and family only. As the definition is vague it seems that any public site private or commercial needs it. If you decide to make your website public please consider to add imprint and privacy policy. You will find a lot of generators on the internet which can provide the neccesary texts.

I am happy with my new blog and will further play around with it. If you like my content connect via LinkedIN.