Hey! Happy new year for starters! Been a while since I've see you here. Most likely it's because I haven't posted anything.. 😅
I hope you haven't forgotten about this place, because I clearly have.. oh well, no point feeling blue about it, because I have good news!
For the past few months I have been working on a variety of different things, and a lot of these are software and tools I'd like to demonstrate, or at the very least talk about it! I unfortunately realized that while the current blog software I am using is fine for general blogging and posts, it doesn't allow me to unleash my creativity, and organize these post in a cohesive manner that makes sense.
There is one solution to this problem: "Tags". The problem with tags is that they are not visible! There isn't any good place to show all 'tags' or showcase them in the home page, and I'd have to make a custom navbar element for the page to take you there.
I also realized that I want to make the experience of using this website a little bit better, by allowing me to customize it further. While Ghost (the app we are using for this site) does allow me to create some custom pages, it doesn't allow me to control their content in greater than detail than just changing their text and title.
alepouna.net is one of my core domains, so I want to be able to use it for all things related to that 'brand', not just be my blog. And unfortunately Ghost simply doesn't allow me to do that.
So how do we fix this problem? By moving to a new solution of course!
Now, that does mean that I have two options:
A) Find another open source blogging style app
B) Use WordPress
I would definitely go for option A, but since I put a limit to my self on being able to have fully custom website first, and a blog second, I don't think I will find a solution that does both good.
So option B it is, WordPress. OF COURSE NOT! I am tired of WP! Some customers at work use, I used to use it, it's so damn exhausting to work with it! And let alone that, it's severely prone to issues, vulnerabilities and generally its super slow.
I want a website that is fast, polished and easy to maintain and managed. So I have decided to make my own website/blog app.
It shouldn't be too hard, in fact I could probably make it in a super easy way, just make static pages in markdown (or just html) and publish with Astro. But then it would mean that I would need a code editor, Git, CI actions and a lot more. Meaning that I wouldn't be able to post from my phone, or quickly from my PC (which I use for gaming, not coding, so it doesn't have any of the tools ready).
Recently, I have started to pick up Directus, which is perfect for such use cases! And thus I started to plan out everything.
Now, I will give you some shocking news, but I have also started to pick up AI tools for development,, and before you judge, its for work reasons. They kinda forced it on us.. I do think I need to vent my thoughts about AI and all its bad and the goods at another blog post, so stay tuned?
Anyway, I have started to utilize a lot more local modals to get more work done quickly, so I decided to give some AI models a go into designing the architecture for such a blog site, leaving me to do the actual APIs and website.
And not gonna lie, the results are quite shocking. I got a really good plan out on which routes to create, which code standards to follow, system architecture, middleware to use, etc. all within a few seconds. It's kinda crazy.
The plan we came up with is the following:
- Create a frontend (website) that has a flexible home page, with focus on showcasing the blog elements
- Create a blog area with all the recent posts and categories
- Have a detailed blog post system that allows me to inject even more blocks and elements than what I can right now with Ghost
As for the 'backend':
- Use Directus as the data source
- Save the blog posts, site configuration and dynamic pages to Directus
- Handle redirects, static pages and other content via Directus
- Allow visitors sign up to the newsletter (with a confirmation)
- And finally, allow user creation (for "members" posts, private posts and in the future maybe paid posts?)
The plan is quite solid, I did do a lot of changes because these AIs seem to lean into following the 'norm' into these kind of apps/website, like using Next and Vercel, which I want to stay away from. I have many reasons for that, and hey maybe that's another good blog post 👀
Anywhos, I have already started working on the Directus/Database for this project, and soon will start working on the frontend too. I might ask the help of one of my mates, or might give AI tools another go, we will see!
For now, this site will stay as is, but expect in the future for things to move around! I don't have a timeframe for now as I want to first finish another project I am working, but it shouldn't be too long now!
I am also considering open sourcing the entire ordeal, so if you are interested into that, maybe leave a comment or let me know with a message? Cheers!
Thanks for coming back to this blog and reading this post, and thanks to all my readers in 2025 for having a laugh or learning something new from my few posts! Even though I haven't wrote many things, I feel happy that I have, and I do want to keep posting more, so stay tuned :)
PS: While I do now use AI's at work for producing code, I will never ever use it to produce written content, especially for this blog. I feel like AI takes a lot of the creativity away, and then it just is pointless to have a blog!
PS2: yes I am employed right now, but I am still looking for work! If you'd like to hire me, please contact me :)