Hello! and welcome to my blog. This will be a place where I post all sorts of random stuff, ranging from notes, to deep dives and frameworks on whatever I'm currently building or experimenting on, all of which will hopefully provide value to you as a reader. In this first post, I'll be covering the reasoning behind this website as well as the process I used to make it.
Why I Made This Website
For a long time, I've wanted my own website. I just thought it was such an interesting idea to own your own piece of the internet which you have full control over. But I also didn't really know what I would use it for, thinking that it would only be useful once I'd made good progress on certain projects, or have something big to share.
However, one day on the bus, I remembered this idea of owning a website and started researching. I saw that moazzam.co.uk was available and, with such a simple and easy-to-remember domain available, I couldn't risk letting it slip by me so I bought it that same day. I didn't really know what I'd use it for at that time, but at least I had it.
PS: I'm only paying £4.13 per YEAR for this website name and hosting which is insane, definitely check out Cloudflare if you want your own (not sponsored).
Working on the website was quite a fun side project to work on between other projects and so the website gradually expanded: first having some basic links, then an about me section and now this blog and newsletter.
As someone who distances themselves from social media (I've set my phone & laptop in a way that I can post content without having the option to see other people's posts or doomscroll), I think a personal website is a very intentional way to share content: with no algorithms to distract you, and complete control over exactly how people see your content. In the age of brainrot and junk content, the idea of providing some value with my blog seemed very interesting to me.
How I Made it
Alright, now for the practical side: exactly how I made my website. If you're thinking of making your own website or simply just curious, this will be for you.
Firstly, I bought the website using Cloudflare. This is because they were the cheapest by FAR. Others charge £10ish per month while Cloudflare only charged me £4 for a year. Secondly, given that they are a massive company (who apparently run 20% of the entire internet), I knew they would have some good tools.
I then set up a very basic site from a random template I found, just to make sure that I had set everything up correctly and I could access my site from the internet. It felt great seeing something up and running on my own domain name for the first time.
After that, I worked on my full v1.0 release. I knew that I didn't want to use a website builder because they often cost money and I wouldn't have full control over the website's layout or content, so I decided I would use regular code. It also meant I would learn a lot more about how exactly websites are run, which is something I've been interested in.
Although I knew how to code in HTML and CSS (the languages used to make websites), I didn't know how to make good looking UI so I decided to vibe code with Gemini. This also saved me a lot of time. I'd ask it to make a certain page, paste it into my code editor and see a preview of the website, tweaking things myself if I didn't like it.
I used VS Code as my code editor, partly because I had used it in the past, and partly because they had the tools required for website development. There is an extension by Microsoft called Live Preview and this was phenomenal to preview changes to the website as I went, saving me lots of time.
From there, the website just grew and I had the idea to setup a newsletter for any random ideas I wanted to post online. After some quick research, I settled upon Beehiiv as the provider (I don't really remember why now, but I've had no issues with them so far and I'm glad I chose them).
Conclusion
Now that the website is out, there are still some things to improve such as adding more colour and personality, making it seem less "like I am an AI chatbot" (real feedback based on the font that I am using lol), expanding it as I get more ideas and of course, posting more blog pages.
As an avid hater of doom scrolling, I'm going to ensure that anything I post here will be of some value or interest to you rather than mindless slop. If this is something you're eager about too, be sure to stay updated via my newsletter below. Otherwise, that's all from me and I will catch you in the next blog post.
(Also, if you have any feedback, be sure to let me know via the methods on my contact page)
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