Recap 2020: Review of the year with blogging, a side project, and other things

This is the second time I am writing a year in review, the first one was for a recap of 2019. The year 2020 has been chaotic, to say the least. With COVID 19 turning out to be a mild world war 3, everyone had a fair share of this disorder and new normal. In this post, I am going to discuss the professional and technical things I accomplished in 2020.

A recap of professional things I accomplised in 2020 including blogging, a side projecat, and some other things

Highlights #

My interview got published on Developers Nepal’s Newsletter volume 1
Successfully migrated this blog from Octopress 2.0 to Eleventy 0.10 - here is the pull request
Deployed a pet project with helping hands from almost 2 dozen people - Au Tech Jobs
Before I took a social media break, a tweet thread I did in May-2020 about “How to run your side project for exactly $0 a month” gathered 36+ retweets and almost 60 likes.

Featured #

This year I got interviewed only once. At least I have 1 interview to share. I was asked to appear for a couple of interviews/panel discussions for youtube channels but I didn’t do it due to some reasons.

When Bibek Shrestha (not the one from Kandara :) band) asked me to do an interview for the first Developers Nepal newsletter I said yes. I got his email about it in mid-Aug (it was winter here then) and my interview was published on Nov 2 (almost summer here).

Also, big thanks to Aviskar and the team to condense the over ranting into something concise and readable.

The interview I believe has set the tone right for the newsletter. The second interview of Anita Sharma is also out recently.

Blogging and writing #

In terms of the number of posts, this year 2020 has been the highest.

I have written 24 blog posts and with this recap, it will be 25.

The year started with a post on the “Difference between backend, frontend, full-stack, and super stack development” which turned out to be the most popular post of 2020.

Let’s look at other posts published this year that have gathered a good amount of views and read:

Most viewed blog posts #

Below are the most viewed posts of 2020 for the blog posts published in 2020 :

Difference between backend, frontend, full-stack and super stack development - Feb 2020
How to use Docker with Node.js a step-by-step tutorial - Nov 2020
5 benefits of pair programming you should know about - Jun 2020
Docker build example: how to go from slow to fast docker builds - Oct 2020
Vegeta load testing a quick primer with GET examples - Sep 2020

Looks like when I write about docker it gets popular :). I have been a bit cautious about cross-posting this year for a better SEO strategy. I have cross-posted to tech Medium publications, Hackernoon, and dev.to. I have been deliberately slow to crosspost after September to gather some more SEO juice.

I have been lucky enough to get my posts published on Daily Js (108K followers) and JavaScript in Plain English (40K followers) publications on medium.

I have also published a couple of my posts on Quick Code (12K followers) and my work’s tech blog.

Moved blog to Eleventy from Octopress #

In March 2020 I moved my blog from Octopress to Eleventy. Octopress 2.x I can say is in a coma if not dead. I evaluated other options Hugo was one of them but Eleventy was a clear winner. It is simple yet super powerful.

My previous blogging software was limiting me as it took a long time to compile the markdown to HTML (CSS + JS of course). Now with Eleventy, that process takes seconds not minutes.

With this ease I have been much better and faster at blogging than before.

I did not change the theme, not even the colors. Eleventy is a lot faster to compile the markdown to HTML (CSS + JS). To make things JAM Stack I have added the most popular posts on the homepage. It comes from an API and the posts are pulled in on build time. I also use Forestry to edit it on the fly now.

Blog posts target - 14 posts, reached 24 :) #

For this year I exceeded my target on the no. of blog posts. I hope I can do it in 2021 too. I had set a yearly goal for 2020 to write 14 blog posts and a recap. Basically at least a post a month. I ended up doing 24 blog posts and this recap, making the total 25. Here is the breakdown by month:

Feb - 1
Apr - 3
Jun - 1
Aug - 1
Sep - 5
Oct - 5
Nov - 6
Dec - 3

Till August I had only 6 posts but Sep to Dec I pushed the tempo really up. As of Aug, I might have just reached my target of 14 posts. In the last quarter, I really pushed hard to get more content out. That brings us to the next segway of posting out good content consistently.

Alexa top 1 million websites #

First time in my life, I saw my blog make it to the top 1 million websites in the world as tracked by Alexa. It entered the top 1 million race around mid-Sep at 748K mark and climbed up to 520K. Then it tumbled down to the 735K range in Dec and stayed there.

Probably it will go out of the top 1 million but this is already a great achievement considering:

There are around 400 million active websites out of the 2 billion or more registered domain names. Basically being on the top 1 million puts your website at the top 0.25% of websites in the world which is not bad at all.

And FYI my blog does not get a tonne of traffic + it runs for exactly $0 a month.

This blog ranks on top 1 million websites in Alexa

Side project #

Similar to 2019, this year as well I focused on only 1 side project. The side project is AU Tech Jobs.

AU Tech Jobs #

We soft-launched AU Tech Jobs on Aug 3 and till now almost 2 dozen people helped build it in one way or the other. The AU Tech Jobs App does not have a lot of users but we think it is benefiting users getting 1300+ jobs from 50+ companies in one place.

Most people contributed code to this platform which includes me. Other people like Ansubha helped manage the social media side of things for this side project I tried to lead.

I want to heartily thank each and everyone who helped build up this side project. Thanks again.

I would highly recommend do only one side project at a time and get it across the line. It is not a good idea to have 2 or 3 running at the same time. As none of them is in a production-ready state.

Misc - everything else #

Some points that I remember:

I helped more people find full-time tech jobs this year too. I helped a couple guys find a better second full-time tech job. I hope they will thank me and not forget the boat after crossing the river ;).
My most popular tweet of 2020 garnered 40 retweets (including quotes) and almost 60 likes. A screenshot is below:

I took a social media break from Oct 2020 and it is still going on. I might carry it on for 2021 too.
It is said that I won the “CI/CD writer of the Year” award at Noonies.tech run by Hackernoon. I was a runner up in the serverless category too. Congrats to Sagar for winning the serverless category. Also Milap for winning the Computer Science category. Good to see Nepalis winning.
I did not do any public speaking, even virtual ones. I didn’t even attend any virtual meetups. Public speaking for me is connecting to the audience best done in person. With this COVID situation is it not possible. I did a lightning talk on learning day at my workplace THE ICONIC about setting up a blog and how to SEO optimize posts. The first slide is below:

I was promoted to Lead Software Engineer circa Sep/Oct-2020.
I started using slack a bit more outside of work. It is a great place to learn and network. Among others Xplorers Slack group is Amazing. They also run the great Knowledge Academy blog.

Conclusion #

This year had its ups and downs.

One thing that it taught us all is probably being resilient in adverse times.

I hope we all get to see a better 2021.