It's quite likely that I will look back and read this post wondering "what was I thinking?" as I looked to pull together a blog so I can share my ideas and learnings with the world.

As a web developer, my typical reaction to such an idea is "I can just build it!" However fortunately of late, I've been more and more looking for existing solutions to solve the problems I face.

Naturally my first stop was WordPress. Why wouldn't it be? WordPress is synonymous with "Blog". I had even gotten as far as arranging a cheap host and installing WordPress! Since I already owned the domain I wanted to use, I just dialled in the name servers, sat back and waited. And waited.

After a solid 6-7 minutes of waiting (yes, I am well aware that name servers take up to 24 hours to resolve, I'm impatient), I decided that I was sick of waiting so Googled "blog platform". Straight to result #1 Best Blogging Platforms of 2014, which had a convenient list of modern blogging platforms with their pros and cons. Lovely! The fact that the article was hosted on one of those platforms was quite fitting, and a little meta.

I opened various links in new windows and started to sign up for a couple of different platforms - but it was Silvrback which caught my attention for a couple of reasons:

• I was able to sign up and start writing this very blogpost within minutes (so meta).
• I love a nice clean UI, and even though I actually found the lack of options jarring at first, I'm already starting to warm to it.
• Markdown.
• Code examples are demonstrated on the introduction page, which is what I intend to use my blog for. Sold.

Yeah okay, I'm probably an easy pushover - but I found myself looking for the path of least resistance, and Silvrback is able to provide me with exactly that.