---
title: A challenge of blog questions
date: "2025-03-04T11:13:55Z"
lastmod: "2025-03-04T11:15:20Z"
categories:
  - how-i-do-things
wp_id: 3947
description: "This is a reflective blogging questionnaire that traces the author’s path from Geocities and hand-built systems to WordPress, Markdown, and a likely future static-site migration."
keywords: [blogging, blog history, Geocities, WordPress, Markdown, personal publishing]
---

[Thejesh](https://thejeshgn.com/2025/02/27/a-challenge-of-blog-questions/) tagged me with these questions.

**Why did you start blogging in the first place?**

I started my website in 1997 on Geocities at `https://www.geocities.com/root_node/`, mostly talking about me. (A cousin once told me, "Anand's site is like [TN Seshan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._N._Seshan) - talking only about himself." 🙂)

(As an aside, I didn't know that searching for [Geocities on Google](https://www.google.com/search?q=geocities) renders the results in [Comic Sans](https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1e6kbpp/googling_geocities_changes_your_search_result_font/)!)

I wanted a place to share the interesting links I found. Robot Wisdom by [John Barger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorn_Barger) and [Scripting News](https://scripting.com/) by [Dave Winer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Winer) were great examples: collection of interesting links updated daily.

In [July 1999](/blog/1999/), as a student at IIMB, I decided to put that into action by creating a custom HTML page updated manually.

**What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?**

WordPress. Because it was the most fully-featured, mature platform when I migrated to it around 2006.

Before that, I used:

1. A custom HTML page on Geocities. But it was hard to update multiple links, create individual pages, categories, etc. So…
2. A Perl-based static-site generator I wrote myself. But as my link count grew, each generation took too long. So …
3. A CGI-Perl-based blogging engine I hosed on freestarthost.com, handling commenting, etc. But at BCG, I didn't have time to add many features (linkback, RSS, etc.) So…
4. [Blogger](https://www.blogger.com/) as a parallel blog, briefly. But it didn't have as many features as (nor the portability of) WordPress. So…
5. [WordPress](https://wordpress.com/) - moving across a bunch of hosting services, and currently on [HostGator](https://www.hostgator.com/).
6. I also blogged in parallel on InfyBlog, Infosys' internal blogging platform on LiveJournal.

**How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that's part of your blog?**

I started with custom HTML in Emacs (or whatever code editor I kept moving to).

Briefly, I used [Windows Live Writer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Writer), which was quite a good blogging tool.

Now, I write in Markdown on VS Code and paste it into WordPress' editor.

**When do you feel most inspired to write?**

When an idea that's been bubbling for a while in my mind bursts out.

**Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?**

I publish immediately.

**What's your favorite post on your blog?**

[The next chapter of my life](/blog/the-next-chapter-of-my-life/), which I wrote on a one-way flight back from the UK to India to start [Gramener](https://www.gramener.com/).

**Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?**

I plan to move it to GitHub Pages with Markdown content and a static site generator. I might write my own SSG again in Deno or use one of the faster ones.

**Who's next?**

I'd love to hear from

- [Anil Radhakrishna](https://mvark.blogspot.com/)
- [Karthik Sashidhar](https://karthiks.co/)
- [Simon Willison](https://simonwillison.net/)