# Welcome Readers 17 June 2018 Explore the journey of a designer-turned-developer as they tackle the challenges of creating a custom blog, choosing Hugo for its efficiency. Dive into this blog for insights into web development, best practices, and the balance between professional growth and personal commitments. Join a journey of learning, sharing, and community in the realm of frontend development. --- I'm a designer turned web developer that specializes in frontend applications. As an advocate for best practices and proper schematics, I believe that the web should be open and accessible for everyone. I've struggled for years to get a decent blog up and running. It wasn't because of the lack of content, on the contrary, it was the design aspect that was the obstacle. I designed countless mockups and developed fully functioning prototypes, but they never entirely made the cut. I was so critical of everything I designed; I always found something that I didn't like, and then found myself rejecting each concept. You might be asking why not just use a pre-made template to get it off the ground? Oh, believe me, looking back; I wish I had gone this route. Being a developer with a background in design, I felt as though I had to create something from scratch. I suppose I went down this path to prove to myself that I'm capable of handling the entire flow, and not just tweaking someone else's design. I'm quite proud! I experimented with static site generators, Ghost, WordPress, Expression Engine, and even attempted to write my own blogging solution... more than once. I ultimately settled on using the static site generator Hugo due to its flexibility, ease of development, and speed. My hopes for this blog is to capture my programming journey and learning. I'll be sharing the good, the bad, and the in-between to provide you with new knowledge and help you with solutions to problems that you may come across too. I will try my best to respond to comments as soon as I see them, but I may answer a little slower on weekends due to family obligations. Thank you for reading my introductory post. This is the beginning of something great! --- Source: https://devinschulz.com/blog/welcome-readers/