Start of a Journey, Again
Third time lucky: a new blog, built on the CMS I make, with a little help from its AI assistant.
This isn't my first go at a blog. It isn't even my second. The last version went up in November 2024, picked up three posts, and then quietly stopped while client work took over. Earlier attempts went the same way.
So why try again? Mostly because the thing that used to get in the way has changed.
Built on my own tools
The old site ran on Statamic, and it was a good fit at the time. This one runs on GlowKit, the Laravel CMS we build at Macsi Digital. It's the same platform behind our own sites, so every time I write here I'm also using the product, finding the rough edges and fixing them. That's a much better reason to keep posting than good intentions.
Underneath it's Laravel 13 with a Filament admin. The theme you're looking at is its own little package inside the app: a terminal for the frame, with a nod to the ZX Spectrum I grew up with.
A bit of help with the writing
GlowKit has an AI assistant built in, and I plan to let it draft a good share of what appears here. That doesn't mean posting whatever it produces. Everything it writes lands in a draft for me to read, change and approve first. Nothing goes live until I've checked it. The ideas, the opinions and the mistakes stay mine.
What to expect
- How I work: planning, running a small agency, keeping projects maintainable.
- Laravel, Filament and the packages I maintain.
- The tools I lean on every day, like Herd and Forge.
- The bits of life in between, and probably some food.
There's still no schedule. The aim is the same as last time: get my thoughts out every once in a while. Let's see where it goes this time.