# Why I Created a Personal Blog and Chose Zola with GitHub Pages

DevFeed: [Why I Created a Personal Blog and Chose Zola with GitHub Pages](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/blog-questions-challenge-37245.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://muffinman.io/blog/blog-question-challenge/>)

Author: Stanko

Published: 2025-01-18T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Stanko Tadić](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/stanko-tadic.md>)

Topics: [Jekyll](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/jekyll.md>), [GitHub Pages](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/github-pages.md>), [Website](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/website.md>), [static-site-generator](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/static-site-generator.md>), [hosting](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/hosting.md>), [Programming](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/programming.md>), [GitHub](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/github.md>), [WordPress](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/wordpress.md>)

Tags: [blog](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blog.md>), [github](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/github.md>), [github-pages](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/github-pages.md>), [hosting](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hosting.md>), [jekyll](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/jekyll.md>), [programming](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/programming.md>), [static-site-generator](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/static-site-generator.md>), [website](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/website.md>), [wordpress](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/wordpress.md>)

## AI overview

The author explains why they created a personal blog, describing it as a way to maintain a personal website and share programming projects outside social networks. They discuss moving from Jekyll to Zola, keeping the site on GitHub Pages, and their interest in eventually building a static site generator with interactive posts and JSX.

## Source excerpt

I've seen this challenge on Herman's blog. I liked it, so I decided to do my own version, even though I'm not using the bear blog. For the same reason, I slightly adapted the original questions. Why did you make the blog in the first place? # Since I first got online, I've wanted a personal website - a piece of internet I can call my own. I had a few websites over the years, but none of them are online anymore (and I don't have backups). Then, in my late twenties, I decided to try again. As someone who loves programming and making things, I've gathered plenty of material to share over the years. I also wanted to change the fact that I hadn't written much since high school. I've never been a fan of social networks, so starting a blog felt like the perfect thing for me -- I could have my own website and share the things I'm working on. This blog has been up since 2016, and I'm really proud of it. While the frequency of my posts has gone down, I like to think the quality has gone up. Why did you choose Bearblog Zola and GitHub Pages? # Before Zola, I used Jekyll, which is tightly coupled with GitHub Pages. GitHub Pages restricts you to the default Jekyll configuration, so I couldn't customize all the stuff I wanted. I started looking for a replacement and stumbled on Zola. It seemed very nice -- fast, a single binary, with a sane templating language. After trying it, I really liked it and decided to stick with it. I kept it deployed on GitHub Pages because I think they're great. Free and fast hosting, and the fact that I don't have to mess with deployments myself -- thanks, GitHub folks! However, for a long time now, I've wanted to write my own small static site generator. It would support interactive posts/components and use JSXI think that JSX is a great templating language. If I ever do it, I'll open-source it. Have you blogged on other platforms before? # As mentioned above, this blog used to be a Jekyll blog. Before that, I tried keeping a blog a few times, but only