How to set up your blog with Wix

Today is Day 6 of our bootcamp and we got a scary email. It was sent by our coding school instructors and it said:

"Set up your technical blog and your first posts are due this week."

Whaaa? We are supposed to publish technical content? But - we don't know anything yet! I swear when people opened their emails, they wet their pants. JK. No, but seriously - this is the famous "impostor syndrome" that many experience when they start out programming.

As intimidating as this task appears, it does have its grounds. What is the purpose of us all being here? Most of us want to apply for jobs as developers. So we need to prove that we have technical knowledge, and even more importantly, that we are individuals who are passionate about what we are doing and learning. Last but not least, we want to be part of the tech community - so why not starting to contribute and share right now?

When I started to get into meditation, I learned about "beginner's mind". In our daily adult lives we habitually react through habits and preconceptions which limits our possibilities. A beginner's mind is an attitude of eagerness and openness. Look at children - the most mundane things are joyous miracles to them.

How does this relate to us? We can use this mindset to communicate to the world the joy of discovering and learning. Be proud of the (long) path that we have set foot on, not judging the process but showing valuable lessons we learned to other beginners, to ourselves, and the blogger community.

So let's get started!

There are a few options out there: Medium, Tumblr, WordPress, github Pages, SquareSpace, Wix, etc.

I chose Wix because

a) I want to know if the advertising budget that they spent on me is worth it - I must have seen the Wix ads three million times...

b) It is free (as opposed to e.g. SquareSpace, Wordpress)

c) It has alot of options for creating a website with subpages, which might come in handy when the blog is growing richer in content.

There are a couple of things that I wish I had known before I got into Wix and could have saved myself desperation and 200 calories from emotional eating.

Lesson Number 1

CHOOSE WISELY WHAT YOU LOG IN WITH

I spent 2 hours configuring my blog. Twice.

If you don't want to waste your time, avoid the rookie mistake I was doing.

When you open Wix it will ask you: Do you want to sign up/log in with Facebook/Google/Else?

I am used to the convenience of using Facebook authorization for literally everything. So that's what I did. After hours of figuring out the navigation and configuration of my blog I was finally ready to publish it. So I hit "Publish". Looks nice!

But... then I saw it:

Quinni2005?? Do I want to apply for jobs with: "I'd love to be considered for the Java Developer position. Check out my technical blog on quinni2005.wix.com"?

What happens is when you log in with Facebook, your blog URL will be based off of your email address that you used to sign up for Facebook. Apparently, in 2008 when I set up my FB account my "quinni2005" email address was not exactly employer friendly.

Wix allows you to choose a domain name but it is not free. So if your Facebook account dates back to high school times when you were using your "cute_babe354@yahoo.com", you might reconsider...

Lesson Number 2

HOW TO SET UP PAGES FOR DIFFERENT BLOG CATEGORIES

Here is how you create multiple pages for different blog post categories that automatically filter for the respective category.

Navigate to the blog manager and click on "Add A New Blog Post":

Watch this screencast for the following steps:

- Fill in content and choose a category for the blog

- Create the web page

- Click the '+' sign and select blog

- Select the blog layout

- Click on the blog and 'settings'

- Filter for the category

(The screencast was recorded with Screencast-O-Matic. This might be the next candidate for a Meta post...?)

Conclusion: It takes a little bit of time to get familiar with the abundance of Wix features. But once you figure it out step by step setting up a blog with all elements feels user friendly.