People and Blogs: Juhis

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

Hi, I'm Juhis! I'm a community builder, writer, tech educator and software developer from Finland. I've been writing on the web since my early teenage years and I love sharing ideas, experiences and knowledge openly to inspire others to learn and create things they are interested in.

What's the story behind your blog?

I've been blogging since early 2000s and I've had many blogs on many platforms. The current blog I've been writing in since 2018 and in 2020 I decided to approach blogging more seriously and aimed for publishing a blog post once a week. Since then, I've missed a handful of weeks and the last time I missed a week without blogging was in the summer of 2023.

My decision to get back to regular blogging was partly a counter move against the growing popularity of video content. I have — like they say — a face for radio and a voice for a blog, so I decided to embrace writing as a medium rather than stress about not having a future on video.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

It depends a lot on what type of post I'm writing. Most of my technical writing starts their life because I learned something new while I was building software either at work or at hobbies. I document them first for myself so I can find it the next time and then I publish them in my blog or my digital garden so everyone can learn from them.

For my lightweight stuff like reviews or sharing something interesting in the world, I mostly just sit down and write.

Anything with deeper ideas start their life in my notes: I read a lot and when I read something interesting, I make notes about it and over time as I read more, these ideas start to accumulate and as I think them further and work on my notes, they start to take more form and eventually they might become a blog post. This is what I want to do more and become better at.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I wrote about my creative environments a couple of years ago when I hosted IndieWeb Carnival on that topic.

I love sitting in a library or a pub and write. Back in 2024, when I wrote about my environment, I wrote that I do most of my writing at home but feel most creative in public spaces. In 2026, it has shifted a bit in that I do most of my writing in these places as well.

I love the life around me: the indistinct chatter in a pub, people walking past and every minding their own business. That kind of white noise around me has always helped me get into the flow. The worst environment for me to write in is in complete silence.

A big chance in my writing environment has come from the fact that so much of my writing these days start from collecting my thoughts into notes. The final piece of the puzzle where I write the actual blog post is just a minor part of combining ideas from notes and polishing it. This approach enables me to do my writing in smaller pieces as thoughts form.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

My setup is a combination of existing tools and lots of homegrown bits and pieces in between. I currently use Notion as a headless CMS: I write my posts there and then import them through their API to my website project with custom scripts. The website is then built with Eleventy static site generator and the website is deployed on Netlify's servers.

I have a longer explanation in my blog for those who want to learn more about everything that happens in between.

I'm constantly improving my workflow and building more tools to make it both easier and more feature rich to build things. Currently I'm designing improvements on the blogroll on my site to improve how people can find more interesting blogs through mine.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

Every blog I start (I have a couple in addition to my main blog) builds on the entire history of me blogging and what I've learned. I'm a bigger believer in continuous improvement and iterative design so whenever there's something I think I would do differently, I implement that to my current blog. I don't feel any urge or desire to do a full reset and fresh start.

A lot of what I know now I only know because I've gone through the long process of building websites and blogs and writing, so I don't think it would be possible to do those things from the very start if I was thrown through a wormhole to the past.

I also take a lot of inspiration from other blogs that I read. A lot of ideas for writing themes and style comes from reading other people while discovering my own style. The same is true for features like popular posts (inspired by Jim Nielsen's blog) or blog stats (inspired by Robb Knight).

Financial question since the web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

My domain costs roughly $15/year but I use it for way more than just my blog.

For hosting, I pay $19/month for the Pro tier because occasionally my posts are shared in sites that drive very high traffic and I've increased my bandwith to not run into problems that would bankrupt me if a high spike happened.

I do not monetise my website in any direct way but I do wish that it leads to more opportunities in my career to make a living doing interesting things. I don't want to do advertisements or sponsored posts out of respect to my readers.

I also don't want to hide my writing behind a paywall as I'm a strong believer in openly sharing knowledge and access rather than only offering it to people who have extra money to spend.

I don't particularly care if other people monetise their blogs. If they do in a way that I find annoying, I simply stop reading them.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

So many! A lot of these are people in tech industry as that's what I love to learn more about on a regular basis. The list is a tiny portion but something to give you a starting point to explore.

• Bob van Vliet who teaches design and has written many great posts for IndieWeb Carnival.
• Ana Rodrigues is a frontend developer who writes excellent pieces about technology and adjacent topics.
• Josh W. Comeau's technical deep dives are a great place to improve frontend skills. Every time he shares a new piece, I learn a ton of new things.
• Lea Verou is one of the people whose technical writing I've admired way over a decade and from who I try to learn to improve my own writing.
• Niko Heikkilä is a former colleague of mine who writes about technology and improving as a craftsperson.
• Robb Knight is a source of constant inspiration to me. He shares a very similar mindset towards building things and sharing them as I do.
• Sara Souiedan is an excellent communicator in the frontend space. Her blog is one of my go-to places for CSS and accessibility related topics.
• Mike of Shellsharks writes about web and his Scroll newsletter is a never-ending source of finding new, interesting blogs from across the personal web.
• Zoe Aubert writes about tech and Warhammer 40K in a way that's a delight to read.
• Finally, V.H. Belvadi is my favourite person online to read. We share a similar approach to thinking and writing while having differing opinions on details. That makes his posts always make my brain go brrrr as the gears of thinking start to turn and new ideas spark.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

If you're reading this and you don't yet have a blog: start one. I highly encourage everyone to start one, no matter where you are in life. If you need help, get in touch and I'm happy to help you. If you start a blog, send me a link, I'm happy to become your first reader.

Writing is a powerful exercise in thinking. It will give you benefits way beyond just having a blog that people read. It will help you clarify your thinking, process your thoughts, become a better communicator and become part of a community of other humans around the world.