Hello, World!
Welcome to my blog!
I’m Siddharth, a software engineer who loves to build, experiment, and learn new things. I’ve created this blog as a way to document my journey, share what I learn, and hopefully help others who are on a similar path.
What You’ll Find Here
This blog is my digital notebook. I’ll be writing about things I’m working on, learning, or thinking about. Topics will include:
- Thoughts on tech and engineering – insights, opinions, or breakdowns of tools and processes I find useful
- Beginner-friendly tutorials – step-by-step guides for solving real problems (the kind I wish I found when I was learning!)
- Personal stories – my experiences in tech, career milestones, mistakes made, and lessons learned
- Ideas and experiments – side projects, coding challenges, or just “what if?” scenarios I’m tinkering with
Whether you’re new to programming or a seasoned developer, I hope there’s something here for you.
Why I Chose Jekyll
When starting a blog, I had a choice: use a platform like Medium or WordPress, or build something myself. I chose Jekyll, a static site generator, because:
- Speed – Jekyll builds a static website, meaning it’s fast and doesn’t need a database
- Simplicity – I write posts using Markdown (plain text with formatting), which is clean and distraction-free
- Customizable – I can tweak the layout, design, and features just the way I want
- Fun to tinker with – I enjoy diving into the internals and learning how things work
To make things look good and reduce setup time, I’m using the Minimal Mistakes theme – a beautiful and flexible theme designed for Jekyll blogs.
Running Jekyll Locally
Before publishing your blog online, it’s a good idea to see what it looks like on your own computer. Here’s how I run my Jekyll blog locally:
bundle exec jekyll server
This command tells Jekyll to start a local web server. You can then open a browser and go to http://localhost:4000 to see your blog as it will appear when live.
Tip: You need to have Ruby, Bundler, and Jekyll installed for this to work. Don’t worry – I’ll write a step-by-step guide soon!
My Jekyll Configuration (Explained)
Here’s a peek at my _config.yml file – the brain of the blog setup. Each line controls part of how the blog behaves:
title: tellsiddh's blog # The blog title shown in the browser
description: A simple blog powered by Jekyll
url: "https://blog.tellsiddh.com" # The actual URL of your site
baseurl: "" # Used if your blog is in a subfolder (leave blank for root)
permalink: /:categories/:title/ # Controls the URL format (e.g. /personal/hello-world/)
remote_theme: "mmistakes/[email protected]" # The theme used
minimal_mistakes_skin: "dark" # Theme style (others: default, air, neon...)
excerpt_separator: "<!--more-->" # Marks where a summary ends and the full post continues
plugins: # Adds extra features to the blog
- jekyll-feed # Generates an RSS feed
- jekyll-sitemap # Adds a sitemap for better SEO
- jekyll-seo-tag # Helps improve search engine visibility
- jekyll-include-cache # Optimizes page includes for speed
author: siddharth # My author name for posts
category_archive:
type: liquid
path: /categories/ # Enables viewing posts by category
tag_archive:
type: liquid
path: /tags/ # Enables viewing posts by tag
twitter_username: tellsiddh # Links to my Twitter
github_username: tellsiddh # Links to my GitHub
Don’t worry if this looks complicated – once you get the hang of it, customizing your blog becomes second nature.
What’s Next?
Now that the blog is live, here’s what you can expect from future posts:
- In-depth guides on tools like Git, VS Code, Jekyll, and more
- Breakdowns of side projects I’m building
- Thoughts on working in tech, growing as a developer, and building a career
- Possibly some random nerdy stuff I just couldn’t resist writing about
If you’ve read this far, thank you I’m truly excited to share this space with you.
Want to connect or follow along?
Stay curious,
Siddharth