First Post on Medium

The Beginning is Always the Hardest

It has been over 4 years since I last managed a blog. The remaining ad revenue of US$88 has been stuck there. Recently, I discovered that I could request to cancel my Adsense account, and as long as I reach the minimum payout threshold, Google will give me the final payment. This has given me the motivation to start writing a blog again.

Starting fresh, I chose the simple title “The Beginning is Always the Hardest” as a starting point.

Reflecting on my history of blogging, it started around middle school when I was most obsessed with games. The family computer was very old and couldn’t run many games, but at that playful age, even if there were no games to play, I still had to turn on the computer every day. It was already very novel to me at that time.

Due to the above factors, most of my computer time was spent chatting with classmates on instant messaging and browsing web pages. As you can imagine, it was quite empty and lacked a sense of accomplishment (at least others could gain a sense of accomplishment from playing games).

At that time, “blogs” were very popular and very new to me. The first one I encountered was the once-popular Wretch.cc. When I created an account and opened my blog for the first time, I felt, “Wow! I have my own website,” and “Wow! I can change the style, so cool.” Coincidentally, the school’s computer class taught web design (Front-Page 2003/ Sheng’s Website), so my first blog was all about exploring the features, finding materials, playing with styles, and installing many “cool” JavaScript plugins. In contrast, the content quality was basically junk.

This gave me a deeper understanding of the online world, such as how to find information, how to fix broken plugins, how to embed images, etc.

Many of the resources were obtained from forums, which were also very popular at the time. However, I was a typical lurker who only read and rarely posted, occasionally replying with “Thanks for the generous share.” While browsing various forums, I discovered “free forums,” where you could become an admin and have your own forum just by signing up. This was a level higher than blogs, and being an “admin” was super cool!

Combining the basics of playing with blog settings, forums had even more settings to play with (creating boards, member permissions, plugin centers). Everything could be set by yourself, like entering another world.

There were many free forum systems, and I kept switching and trying them out. Some had incomplete features, some were not free, some were unstable, and some had too many ads. The one I remember most was Marlito, which best met my needs and was the one I managed the longest.

At the same time, I moved my blog to “YouthWant Blog.” The reason was that Wretch.cc started imposing various restrictions, and YouthWant was just starting, with fewer restrictions and features that met my needs. This time, I focused on content, with 70% sharing useful software (similar to A-Rong’s Welfare) and 30% sharing forum experiences (settings/bug fixes).

I wrote about 30 posts, with daily views around 200 and a peak of 500 (not much by today’s standards). I was in the top 10 of YouthWant’s blog rankings, with most traffic coming from posts sharing useful software. I managed it seriously for over a year, but then got busy with schoolwork in the third year of middle school and high school. Eventually, I joined a training program and left the blog idle.

Due to the blog name being too cheesy, only a screenshot of the view count is shown.

Later, I created another Blogger for technical articles, recording programming issues and solutions. However, Blogger was not user-friendly, and its basic features couldn’t meet my needs, so I gave up after a few posts.

In the later stages, I applied for a domain and bought hosting to set up a WordPress blog. But everything had to be done by myself—setting up, adjusting features. I couldn’t focus on writing content, so it was also written intermittently. After the hosting expired, I didn’t renew it, and the website went offline until now.

In summary, the journey from finding the concept of a Blog very novel -> to -> exploring and mastering Blog functionalities -> to -> focusing on the essence of the Blog - the content of the articles -> to -> sharing technical articles

Laziness, less recording of the process, reviewing, and sharing, and the allure of advertising revenue gradually led me further away from my original intention, the simple enthusiasm to share with everyone.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/zuvonne/3738631215

Set a new goal for myself, with teaching and learning as the original intention, start recording life anew!

1. Technical aspects: iOS App development, Swift, PHP, Mysql…
2. Life aspects: work, photography, unboxing, random murmurs
3. Experience aspects: recently delving into machine learning, starting from scratch
4. Story aspects: skills competition experiences, life observations

This article is also published on my personal Blog: [Click here to visit].

For any questions or feedback, feel free to contact me.

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本文中文版本

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This article was first published in Traditional Chinese on Medium ➡️ View Here