Essentially, development blogs about your website are out there in the open and they chronicle your site-building and modification process, from changelog posts to bug fixes, design choices and what you learned, etc. They establish and cultivate trust, offer consistent information out of content you already have, and provide a history for search engines and readers. Keep a simple changelog and add in longer tyings up posts as needed.
What Is a Website Development Blog?
A development blog is a way to track your site’s progress. The simplest form is a changelog, a running log of updates, new features, significant changes, bug fixes and milestones. One site owner states it’s one stop for site changes, when/why? A development blog takes a step further to diving into the ‘why’ of changes.
The format is written in the software. For instance, the lead developer of GeneratePress shares all of his changelogs on a development blog category and directs users to this when asked for changelogs. The same support thread demonstrates that readers want to see an easy-to-use changelog and a page listing what is coming along the pipeline. Both are things you can provide for your development blog.
Why Keep One
- Transparency builds trust. By providing a changelog, you demonstrate to your site users that you are updating your site regularly and it’s being maintained and continually improved.
- It depicts your path. For its clients and collaborators, it provides a transparent picture of how the site improved and for curious readers, it’s another perspective on site quality.
- It generates ideas. Checking your changelog can give you ideas about what new features to put into your site and what content topics to address and design changes to make.
- It helps to establish your brand. One developer-blogging proponent claims that all of this blogging will help you with SEO for your name and that you will have a ready-made database of “tell me about a project” answers.
- The benefit remains with your own website. For a blogger who generates his own blog (build in public), his own website is considered his own canonical website since it is the one that is owned and has the SEO.
Development Blogs About Your Website: Five Post Types
This Editorial comparison is not the official taxonomy.
| Blog post | General content and comments | Good for most occasions | Not too difficult and not too easy or boring |
| Initiatives entry | What has been addressed, when and why | Activity specific to a particular initiative or theme | Low |
| Build log | working on this week | reg progress | lo to med |
| Content area | Learning experience (problem and solution) | Are there items worth teaching in connection to this problem or bug? | |
| Decision note | Justification for the selection of a design or tool | Medium Meinungsäußerung | Medium advantage/disadvantage takes place, was able to be explicated |
| Roadmap update | What’s planned next | Milestone / Planning cycle | Low |
One devlog guide states that problems and problem solving is popular, so, he recommends using that method in development writing. Even new points of view can help, because experts can’t remember what it was like to be new.
My Interaction Log
My Interaction Log (Original Framework)
Well-intentioned goals are wasted if there is no system. One builder claims he did have a blog, but not a pipeline going to it, and that “write a post about what you did today” wasn’t carried over to a hectic build day. His fix was to keep it light from Palace; every week distill it into one post. This is an adapted form of this method.
- Capture. After each work session, spend a minute or so marking down changes made, the bug you discovered and healed and anything else that was unexpected.
- Distill. Review notes and select one angle per week.
- Publish. Make that angle 1 post on your website.
When a session didn’t warrant notetaking, don’t take notes. Not everything is “content”, as one builder put it, and to act otherwise means you will be publishing filler.
Keeping It Sustainable
Devlogs don’t work because people forget to keep up to them and finish them. When writing a game, it’s important to start simple and be consistent with a purpose, a game-dev guide states. It includes the time of your audience, too, as to how often you should post, and what you’re posting about. One indicates to maintain a personal journal and pick out certain wisdom to place in the public journal. The idea of building in public shouldn’t be about a burden to create content all the time.
Practical rules:
- Begin in a single area – for example, the “Development” section of your site.
- Add URL at the end of each post to the appropriate page, commit or tool.
- Try to keep entries small and include something unique like a funny bug or accomplishment.
- Avoid sharing any personal information, like passwords, account numbers, or security information.
Website Development Blog Checklist
A checklist listing websites with development blogs.A linkable asset containing a spreadsheet of websites with tech development blogs.
- Created a “Development” or “Changelog” category
- Select simple entry format: date, change, reason
- Go through a process for capturing once a minute after every work session.
- Scheduled a weekly time to distill notes
- Determined what not to publish – credentials, client information, security information
- Incorporated a public roadmap/coming next section
- Associate each post with the corresponding page, commit or tool
- Made the changelog easily accessible on main menu
- Organised previous entries for subject ideas
- Short enough to maintain interest in entries kept.
Guest Post Angles
These are topics that work well for web development and WordPress/indie publications:
- The changelog as a trust signal: What to log/writing and what to avoid.
- A sustainable pipeline – building in public without burnout.
- How to get small increments of change into long-form content, from changelog to article.
Don’t Plan the Second Until the First Is Published
Watch out for the perfect system. Make a brief blog post on something that you have recently changed on your site, why, and what you learned. Publish it, use a 1minute capture habit, a weekly distillation. Word of mouth for your website can be found in development blogs about your website and that is where it all adds up and when you have reached your 10th blog you will more than make a comeback from your first.
