At WordCamp US 2016 I gave this talk, Blogging – The Best Thing I’ve Done as a Developer. This post contains the same general content in written form (for those like me who prefer reading instead of watching a video).
I started blogging here at salferrarello.com in 2013 while working as a developer at LaunchDM. Since then, I’ve seen a lot of benefits from this blog.
Benefits of Blogging
I’ve seen four primary benefits from my blogging:
- Platform Familiarity
- Recall
- Sharing
- Brand Building
Platform Familiarity
Historically, I would stop once I’d “solved” a problem. This didn’t always mean I fully understood the solution, merely that I’d gotten it to work. Before moving to programming full-time, I was a teacher and a truism in teaching is that to really understand a subject you should teach it. I’ve found writing posts forces me to better understand the topic, making me a better developer.
Recall
I’m not always good at remembering things and in web development (and WordPress programming) there are a lot of things to remember. This site allows me to take notes, assign them to categories, tag them based on their content, and they’re searchable. I don’t have to know the answer, I just need to know where to get the answer.
Additionally, it is a wonderful feeling when you search Google for an answer and find it on your own website.
Sharing
I like helping others but this does take time and time is a limited resource. By posting my solution online, I can often help others by pointing them to my relevant blog post. Additionally, I help lots of people without ever actually interacting with them (you can see some wonderful feedback from members of the Genesis community in these comments).
Brand Building
Building your brand makes you more valuable as a developer. This value can help the company where you work, your own company, or yourself when you want to get hired at a new company.
Excuses for Not Blogging
I know there are lots of reasons not to blog. I’ve heard many (and said many myself).
I don’t have time
My blogging drives leads, helps me win projects, and saves me time looking things up all over again – I’m seeing an excellent Return on Investment (ROI) from blogging.
Every time I need to Increase the “Tested up to” Value for my Stop Emails Plugin on the WordPress repository, my blog post turns that 20 minute task into a 5 minute task. Even if a post doesn’t outline the steps you need to take, your own notes often allow you to quickly get back up to speed on an idea or concept you visited previously.
I don’t have anything to write about
If you spent more than 20 minutes trying to figure something out, it is a good candidate for a blog post. When you do figure it out, make it a draft post right away. Sometimes I find my answer in my drafts.
I will look dumb
Yes. You will make mistakes or post something that is flat out wrong. The good news is most of the web community is kind and supportive. I’ve gotten lots of comments, corrections, and improvements. Unfortunately, not everyone is nice. I always try to look for a positive spin in their words but if I can’t find one, I delete their comment. This is your blog, this is your home, you don’t need to tolerate disrespect.
Go Forth and Blog
There are lots of challenges in web development and more coming up each day. Even when a solution is known, it isn’t always well documented. I don’t want to have to try and figure everything out. I want high quality content from other developers to make my life easier, so selfishly I hope you’ll start blogging.
Photo Credit:
Hi Sal, It was great meeting you at WordCamp US. As I said, I really identified with your topic, and if you don’t mind, I will repost on my blog (with a link to the full article here). As I mentioned, I would love to do this as a topic for my local meetup, but I wouldn’t try to steal it as a WordCamp topic. If you’re ever in the SC area and want to write it off as a business expense, I’d love to have you speak at my meetup. Hope to see you at a future WordCamp!
Hi Laura,
It was a pleasure meeting you. I’d be flattered to have this post mentioned on your blog. I think it would be wonderful if you wanted to present your own take on this topic to your Meetup or at another WordCamp ( I’m not the first to push developers to share their knowledge through blogging nor do I want to be the last ). I’ll certainly keep in mind your offer to visit your SC Meetup – it is always terrific meeting new people in the WordPress community.
Thank you for introducing yourself and our conversation at WordCamp US. I’ll look forward to crossing paths at future WordCamps.
Sal — Thanks for a great presentation at WordCamp. I asked you during the Q&A about the challenges of trying to determine where to write — on your agency site or on your personal blog.
I still don’t have the answer, but I’ve resurrected my personal blog and I’ll use that for most posts, though still posting from time to time on the agency blog (only when I have more “professional” content to post). It helps that I have a small team that can contribute there as well. We’ll see how it goes!
Also, kudos for staying on track after the technical hiccup at the beginning. That would have flummoxed other speakers, but you jumped right back in. While they were working on the computer issues, we enjoyed watching the full dialog posted on the screens on the closed-caption display (“should we plug it in here? where is that cable? ah, yes. maybe this will work.”). It was quite funny!
Thank you for your kind words. I always love how terrific the attendees at WordCamps are.
As I mentioned when you asked, I really should make it a point to keep up with my company blog or I should eliminate the blog from that site. Perhaps having typed it out, it will help me get it done.
Thanks.
Used your plugin this Summer, thanks for writing it’s awesome. The other alternative I’d always used was switching off email on the dev server so nothing could get out and not setting up third-party. I much prefer your turn-key plugin when not developing solutions requiring email. Not sure if you ever need them on but not live, https://mailcatcher.me/ is an awesome solution for that case.
Hi Lewis,
Glad you found my Stop Emails plugin useful. Yes, Mailcatcher is awesome. I’ve been using it on my local installs so I only use my plugin when working on remote servers now. Thanks for the nice comment.