I'm Abhinav, and among being many things, I am also a blogger.

a little flashback...

It was around late 2011 or 2012, I don't remember correctly. I wanted to create a gallery website where I can post the photos I clicked.

Google's Blogspot was the obvious choice. I felt so wonderful when I could finally setup a site with a custom domain name.

this is how my first photo blog looked like, initially setup in 2011 on blogspot, and later moved to WordPress...

This is how web design looked like at those times, with gradients, textures, drop shadows, background images. It may look outdated today, but felt great then, and I still like that look.

That's how I got introduced into the world of blogging and web development. My main intention was to be able to manage my site without the help of another developer. If I wanted to tweak the header, I'd modify the HTML template. If I wanted to change the background color, I'd add some CSS.

Finding it interesting, I began exploring more areas including WordPress, which inevitably introduced me to PHP and MySQL.

As a freelancer, I had even created a few websites for small clients, which included WordPress, PHP, and a few hand-coded HTML & CSS sites.

That's when I thought of writing a blog.

That opened up two niches in front of me:

• one for people with little or no coding knowledge - discussing mainly WordPress, hosting, reviews, SEO, and other general digital marketing things
• or a coding blog discussing the things I learn in PHP, JavaScript, CSS, etc.

I began with this blog - CoralNodes - in 2019. Initially it was just a digital marketing blog where I wrote reviews about WordPress products, hosting, and tutorials on how to create websites.

Later I created another blog - Coding Reflections - despite the difficulty in managing two blogs at the same time.

My initial thought was that the audience for both will be different. A WordPress person may not be interested in coding, and coder may not be interested in WordPress.

It has been well over a decade since I created my first website, and over five years since I started this blog in 2019. Times have passed and a lot of things changed in tech. I decided to merge the two together into this blog.

But what are those changes in a nutshell?

shifts in the blogging landscape

A decade in tech feels like a century in the normal world. That's the volume of changes you see every year. Some changes I like, some I don't.

In the earlier days, there were not enough good tools. Gradually, things got matured. We saw an increasing number of content management systems, no-code tools, and platforms that allow anyone to create a website according to their wish. That's a good change.

The overall aesthetics, typography, and designs have also improved a lot. That's also good.

On the flip side, things got a little messy. There were a number of personal blogs and websites - though not polished as today's sites - that provided genuine information till around the mid 2010s.

Afterwards, the scene started getting saturated. The no. of websites exploded. With that came the never-ending race towards the first position on Google SERPs.

Websites with a personal touch took a backseat while money-oriented marketing sites took over. People were pumping out words more than ever just to create long-form-content and please Google.

For the user, finding useful info has become difficult. Whereas for the creator, sharing knowledge has become like mundane job rather than an artistic/creative process.

Similarly, you can witness a parallel story unfolding behind the scenes - on the dev side of things.

shifts in webdev trends

A lot of good things happened in the web development arena during the past ten years.

• JavaScript frameworks made interactive UI development a lot easier
• PHP, which powers most of the websites, got a lot faster and secure
• better deployment tools like Docker

On the flip side, some changes are not that welcome:

• bloated websites due to overuse of JavaScript on the frontend
• running after the latest framework without any reason (someone said - "no week shall pass without a new JavaScript framework being released")

so, what's next?

Since things are changing like I mentioned above, I can't limit myself to one area of focus. So I feel there is no point in keeping two separate blogs. Instead, whatever I come across in tech that I feel is worth sharing, I'll post it here. It can be anything:

• coding in PHP
• WordPress tips
• themes and plugin reviews
• DevOps, linux
• Next.js, JavaScript framework tips
• SQL
• SEO
• content management systems
• no-code tools

However, YouTube does not like having different/not-so-related topics in the same channel. So I've decided to keep the coding channel as it is. Whereas on this blog, I can easily organise topics with categories and tags.

why am I doing it this way?

Now some of you might be thinking, "why can't you stick to just one area instead of going all over the place?"

No, I am not going all over the place. The idea is to explore tech from various angles. I don't like going deeper and deeper into one rabbit hole.

I enjoy getting a high level overview of a complex piece of tech, which I can then crunch into simple words or steps so that any layman can understand. I am looking for the feeling I got when I was able to setup of self-hosted WordPress site, or when I could build a custom CMS for the first time.

From my perspective, tech is a single giant thing that (seems to have) originated from human brain and keeps moving crazily while affecting lives (human and others) like never before. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a different question. Anyways, watching it from various angles is a fun thing to do.

With that being said, I also like the process of weaving something with code to make a web experience, be it a simple blog or something more complex like an eCommerce site. I don't even know if my knowledge is enough to call myself a developer or not. For that reason, news like "AI taking away developer jobs" don't bother me.

I don't aim to land a job or be an expert in a particular niche. In the meantime, I may become good at a thing or two, or maybe I am. Who knows? Anyways, if my writings and videos help you in your life, business or job, that's great!

Regarding money? It's too difficult to pour your passion when something is done just for the money. So if this site generates some revenue here and there, that's great. If it doesn't, that's also okay. I'll keep posting as long as there's enough to keep support this domain name and hosting.