Hello again everyone 👋 You might have noticed that my blog looks a little different today, okay, a lot different. Today marks the first day in the next evolution of MorganLinton.com, and what better time to do it than my 14 year blogging anniversary.
Yes, I've been blogging for 14 years, and no, it wasn't intentional.
What started as fun experiment, and a way for me to do a little journaling, turned into a lifelong passion for writing and a blog that has reached readers around the world, many of whom have been with me for over a decade.
When I started my blog I was in my mid-20's working for a new startup called Sonos in Boston. I had just started buying domain names, and no, I wasn't buying very good ones 😂 My blog became a way for me to connect with the word in a way I couldn't imagine and writing for an audience became something I really fell in love with.
As my life has changed, this blog has been a constant, it's led to some of my strongest friendships, connected me to some truly life changing opportunities, and more than anything just given me a place to express myself and be me.
For my 14 year anniversary I decided it was time to take my blog to the next level, to upgrade the design, the readability, and the speed. On top of that I wanted to make it easier for people to pick how they read my blog, I was seeing a greater demand for a newsletter but knew I wouldn't have time to do both.
Then I stumbled on Ghost and my world changed. Ghost offered an incredibly fast, modern, and pixel perfect experience, but with it came some real fears. I was afraid about the thousands of posts I've written disappearing from Google, scared of the headaches with moving everything to a new platform.
But I knew the time had come so I pulled the trigger. You can read a bit more about my journey from Wordpress to Ghost in this post. After over a year of research and planning, my journey to Ghost has been completed. It wasn't as easy as I had hoped, but I had to do it and I fought through issue after issue until it was done.
Today I'm excited to unveil the new MorganLinton.com, and pardon my dust because there's still a few things that aren't working yet. One of the things I've learned over the years is that you can't be afraid of change, it's okay if things don't go perfectly, it's worth a little friction for making real progress.
That being said, I'll point out some of the less-than-perfect things on my blog now just in case you're wondering:
- the links at the top of the page don't work yet, but they will soon
- search is broken, it will also be fixed
- that comment box you see at the bottom, it's going away - it's 2021 and comments live on Twitter
- that endless list of tags that causes my blog to scroll forever, that's annoying
- the text menu is impossible to read once you scroll over the white background
- the about message in the footer isn't filled in yet
So while there's still some work to do, a lot has been done. All of my posts for the last 14 years have been moved over, the links all work in Google, and the new site is almost twice as fast as the old. The text is more readable, looks great on mobile, and you can now easily subscribe to my blog posts and easily read my blog just like you would an email newsletter.
I couldn't be more excited about the move to Ghost, about 14 years of blogging, and about the journey ahead, but I'll leave it there for now. If you've been with me on this journey for a decade or more, thank you 🙏 And if you're just joining me now, welcome 🙌
Here's to the journey ahead 🚀
