Should You Care About the Technical Side of Blogging?

There’s a lot that one can learn about blogging, and one of the things I like about it is that there’s always more to learn. But do you actually need to fuss over learning the technical side of blogging? And by technical side of it, I mean anything that goes beyond your basic writing, publishing, reading, and commenting. The short answer is no, absolutely not, but let’s chat about it.

I’m of the opinion that a lot of the technical stuff can make it easier for other people to find your blog, but it doesn’t necessarily make your blog any better. Things like categories, tags, and search engine optimization (SEO) fall into this category.

Sometimes learning things can help to make your life easier. I know quite a few people hate the block editor, but if there are things that you reuse across posts (like the bit at the bottom of this post about my Blogging Toolbox page), reusable blocks are a wonderful thing. If you’re on the free WP plan, learning how to resize and compress images can help you stay within your media storage limits.

When it comes to figuring out all you can to customize your theme, I think other people’s level of caring about the finer details of what your site looks like is 25% or less of your own level of caring. A lot of people are reading it in the WP Reader anyway, so they don’t have a clue what your actual site looks like.

Then there are all the shoulds from website gurus, like how you should write your titles, what your formatting should be like, what your post URLs should be like, etc., etc. Some of that advice might be worth taking if you’re trying to monetize, but as a regular personal blogger, it’s all totally optional. Are your posts easily readable? If yes, that’s all that really matters.

I like learning about the nuts and bolts of blogging because a) I’m a geek, and b) I have a lot of time on my hands. But if you have zero interest in any nuts or bolts, that is completely okay.

Do you have any interest in, or ever feel like you should know more about, blogging’s nuts and bolts?