[Vibgyor5]

I see your point and agree - Substack etc may exist today but might not in 2-3-5y down the line and it'd be valuable to have hold of your own writing from Day 1.

On a different note, what has been the value of "creative posts" and even "creative name for your blog" for you?

I am overthinking this but sometimes I find myself wondering whether my post is really all that useful, that my blog should have a more creative/captivating name to catch audience's eyes etc. Did you ever face that? If yes/no, how'd you suggest to overcome this?

[simonw]

I don't think the name or design matters very much at all.

The vast majority of traffic you get to your blog these days will be because somewhere linked to an individual post.

As long as it's readable, the people who arrive to read that post won't care about the branding that surrounds it.

[zerkten]

>> On a different note, what has been the value of "creative posts" and even "creative name for your blog" for you?

Why do we name anything? There are many reasons, but it's important to distinguish your site from others. Content is the primary way to distinguish a blog because the original consumption tool was an RSS reader. Things have changed a lot, so more people go directly to most blogs.

If you have web design chops then there is an opportunity to create a distinct experience. The value of this is felt most by people who can appreciate good design, so unless you've goofed up usability, most people probably won't notice the design much. Don't mess up the usability because people remember bouncing from those sites or complain in comments here.

There are tons of developer blogs out there so unless you are notable in some area (big or small) for some set of readers then your name may not be enough. "Joel on Software" as a blog name stands out more than "Joel Spolsky's Blog". It is possibly easier to communicate verbally, signifies the content, feels informal, etc.

Does it matter if the content is only useful to you? It doesn't. The act of blogging improves your writing, creativity, tech skills, forces you to learn etc. So, you move forward in area of your career that many software people struggle: communication. If you write about stuff close to the area you work in then you'll find you reference your own blog posts a lot. Scott Hanselman recommends writing a blog post and referencing it an email instead of sending the same content in that email. There is some good stuff linked from https://www.hanselman.com/blog/your-words-are-wasted.

You overcome your problems by dealing with your anxiety. Why do you care about these specific aspects to the point that it blocks you from just writing and publishing? This is the differentiator between highly trafficked blogs and those that aren't. For a subset of people, noodling on these aspects and their blog template is the point itself. You need to decide on the true purpose, the why, and come up with a plan. There are lots of in-between steps like buying a nice template, drafting a lot of content to see if a name falls out of that, adopting a name like "Vibgyor5 on Software" etc.