Notes on "blogging"

Today I spent a day trying to add i18n support to the website. I brainstormed ideas and documented them in a GitHub issue. I also tried to design and implement a translation key system and a new routing system, and wrote a lot of code.

In the end, I realized it makes both the site and my writing workflow more complicated than I’d like. Direct i18n support doesn’t feel like the right move right now — it adds friction and mental overhead, and I want to be able to just start writing when an idea comes up.

Since the website’s structure is entirely under my control, I want to design a content organization that genuinely fits my own writing habits while still being open and readable to different audiences. I don’t want to add structural complexity to the site just to satisfy a sense of “everything must be unified.”

So I’m going to park this issue for now. The site will stay focused on technical writing and public English content. Anything that doesn’t fit yet will live in my private Notion workspace, and I’ll revisit it later when it makes sense.

I just updated the license of this website. Now it’s dual-licensed: code under MIT, content under CC BY 4.0. Previously I used CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 for content, but decided to go more open — fewer restrictions, more sharing.

Here’s the commit: zlliang/zlliang@6083f34.

I just added a new category of notes called “quote notes”. Quote notes share quotes from books, articles, and other sources, sometimes with my own commentary.

Here’s the commit: zlliang/zlliang@3419c89. I also updated the relevant descriptions in Starting a Tech Blog at the End of 2025.

I just added pagination to note pages like /notes and /notes/categories/link, as the number of notes grows. Each page now shows up to 20 notes, and a tiny pagination indicator lets you navigate between pages without scrolling endlessly. I used Astro’s built-in pagination feature. Here’s the commit: zlliang/zlliang@0b22dda.

Happy holidays! At the end of 2025, I’m starting a blog. I’ve already written several entries and feel confident I can keep it going.

Here I talk about my past attempts, the writers who inspired me, the motivation, the topics to cover, and the approach I’m taking. It’s my version of a blogging manifesto.