April 15, 2020

Ready for takeoff: The new Apollo blog

Peggy Rayzis

Peggy Rayzis

Blogging is an important way we help developers build great apps at Apollo. It’s how we share GraphQL best practices, spread awareness about new Apollo features, and connect with our awesome community of developers.

In four years, our blog has grown from a small company blog into a valuable learning resource for thousands of developers worldwide. We’d like to give a big thank you to all the community contributors who made this possible by publishing articles on our blog. Sharing your knowledge is what has made this blog successful.

We’re excited to announce that the Apollo blog has a new home at apollographql.com/blog! 🚀 Rest assured, we’ve migrated all of our articles over to the new site, so you don’t have to worry about missing your favorites.

From Medium to Gatsby

When we first started the Apollo blog in 2016, publishing on Medium was a natural choice because it allowed us to reach developers that may have not otherwise heard of us. It worked! Over the years, we amassed an audience of over 26,000 subscribers who enjoy learning about Apollo.

While we want our articles to reach as many developers as possible, that goal shouldn’t come at the expense of our readers. In recent months, we’ve been disappointed with Medium’s pop-ups and paywall that distract from the reading experience and restrict developers from accessing our content.

Instead, we decided to move off Medium in favor of creating our own blog with Gatsby, WordPress, and Netlify. Gatsby enables us to use React for our site’s frontend while querying WordPress at build time, resulting in a blog that’s fast, consistent with other Apollo sites like the docs, and easy to publish. 

Our blog is open source, so please file an issue if you have any feedback. Additionally, be on the lookout for a deep dive into how we built the Apollo blog from lead Developer Experience engineer Trevor Blades!

Contribute to our blog

We love community contributions to our blog, and we encourage you to submit a proposal if you have an idea you’d like to share.

Posting to the Apollo blog is an excellent way to get involved in the GraphQL community, gain exposure, and become a better technical writer. I know this from experience, since posting my first article to the Apollo blog eventually led to me joining the team. One thing that impressed me about my first experience contributing that still rings true today was how supportive the Apollo team was during the writing process.

Whether you’re new to technical blogging or an experienced writer, we’re here for you through every step of the way. Even if your idea isn’t fully formed, we’ll work with you to scope it down, shape it, and come up with an outline. Once you have a draft, we’ll help you edit it so it’s clear and concise. Finally, we’ll spotlight your post on our blog homepage and share it with thousands of developers on social media.

Blogging is one of the most effective ways to teach others while leveling up your own skills. What are you waiting for? Submit a proposal and let us know what you think about the new Apollo blog. Happy reading!

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Peggy Rayzis

Peggy Rayzis

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