Sep 02, 2025·8 min
How to Create a Website for a Founder’s Learning Notes
Step-by-step guide to build a simple website for a founder’s learning notes: choose a format, set up structure, publish fast, and keep it searchable.
Step-by-step guide to build a simple website for a founder’s learning notes: choose a format, set up structure, publish fast, and keep it searchable.
A founder’s learning notes site is a simple place to publish what you’re learning while building: insights from customer calls, experiments that worked (and didn’t), tools you tested, decisions you made, and the reasoning behind them. Think of it as a lightweight personal knowledge base you’re willing to share.
Learning notes are short, practical write-ups that answer questions like:
They help you remember and compound your thinking, help your team understand context (especially as you hire), and can help your community learn from your experiments—without pretending you have all the answers.
A learning notes site is not a polished marketing blog, a press page, or a portfolio of only your wins. It’s also not a real-time diary.
You don’t need to publish every thought—just the ones that are repeatable, useful, or clarify a decision.
It’s okay if posts are imperfect. The value comes from being consistent and clear, not from sounding “finished.” If you wait until everything is fully proven, you’ll publish too late (or never).
The best founder notes make the hidden work visible:
Over time, this becomes a searchable record of lessons learned—useful for onboarding, retrospectives, investor updates, and your own future self.
This guide is designed as a ~3000-word, step-by-step walkthrough you can actually follow. It will cover structure, platform choices (static site vs. CMS vs. builders), publishing workflow, and basic SEO—so your notes website stays easy to maintain as it grows.
Before you pick tools or design templates, decide who this site is for and how it will be used. These choices shape everything else: what you write, how candid you can be, and how much maintenance the site will require.
Start by choosing the primary reader:
If you’re unsure, default to you + future you. You can always make selected notes public later.
Most founders do best with a mixed model:
A simple rule: if a note contains names, pricing, or identifiable customer details, keep it private by default.
Decide whether you’ll publish:
Consistency beats intensity. Pick a cadence you can keep during busy weeks:
Give yourself permission to publish “draft-quality” notes. Your site should reduce friction, not add homework.
The “right” format is the one you’ll actually keep shipping. Founder learning notes work best when the structure reduces friction: you can post quickly, and readers can still find what matters later.
A blog is a time-ordered stream of posts: what you learned this week, a decision you made, a book summary, a teardown.
It’s great when your notes are tied to a journey (building, hiring, fundraising, product iterations). Readers can follow along—even without an email list—because there’s a clear “newest first” entry point.
A wiki is organized by topics and pages, not dates. It works better when you’re documenting:
If you find yourself updating the same concept repeatedly (“Our ICP definition”), that’s a wiki signal: make one canonical page and refine it.
A digital garden is a middle path: notes evolve over time and connect heavily via links. It’s perfect for messy, real thinking—drafts, partial ideas, “here’s what I believe so far.”
The risk: without a clear starting structure, it can feel confusing to new readers.
Start with chronological posts + tags. It’s the lowest-effort publishing model, and tags give you a second navigation layer without forcing you to design the whole taxonomy upfront.
Then combine formats as you grow:
This “feed + evergreen” approach keeps momentum while steadily turning your best notes into reusable pages (e.g., a /blog feed plus a “Start Here” page for essentials).
A notes site fails most often for a boring reason: you can’t find anything after a few months. A simple site map solves that. Your goal isn’t to predict every topic you’ll ever learn—it’s to create a structure that stays stable while the content grows.
Keep the “always available” pages few and clear:
These five cover 90% of what readers need without making navigation feel like a dashboard.
Optional pages are great—until they become stale. Add them only when you have content to maintain:
If you don’t update one of these at least quarterly, consider folding it into Notes.
Aim for 5–7 top-level items max. Everything else can be discovered through search, tags, and internal links.
Leave room for future sections by designing your Notes page to scale: an index + filters + “recent notes.” You can always add a new category later, but changing your top navigation every month trains readers to stop clicking.
A learning-notes site stays useful only if you can file (and later find) ideas quickly. A simple taxonomy—categories, tags, and cross-links—gives you structure without turning publishing into admin work.
Use categories for the “big areas” of founder life. Keep them few and stable so you don’t reorganize every month.
Good starter set (5–8): Product, Sales, Hiring, Ops, Fundraising, Strategy, Personal.
Example: a note titled “My onboarding checklist for the first AE” might live in Hiring, even if it mentions pipeline or tooling.
Tags are for details that cut across categories—frameworks, tools, and recurring topics.
A practical rule: only add a tag if you expect to reuse it. If you won’t realistically write 2–3 notes that deserve the same tag, skip it.
Examples:
Also decide a light naming convention (singular vs. plural, hyphens vs. spaces) and stick to it: e.g., user-research (not “user research” in one place and “research” in another).
Cross-links turn isolated notes into a map of your thinking. When a note references another concept, link it inline (“see also: my note on pricing experiments”).
A simple habit: every time you publish, add 1–3 links to related notes and add one backlink from an older note if it now has a better, updated explanation. Over time, your site becomes easier to browse—even for you six months from now.
Your notes site succeeds or fails on one boring detail: whether you’ll actually publish when you’re busy. Pick the platform that lets you add a note, link it, and hit “publish” in under 10 minutes.
CMS (Content Management System): WordPress, Ghost, etc. You log in, write in an editor, and publish. Great when you want comments, drafts, scheduling, and plugins. Trade-off: updates and plugin management can become a chore.
Site builder: Webflow, Squarespace, Notion-based publishers, etc. You design with drag-and-drop templates and publish fast. Great when you want it to look polished with minimal setup. Trade-off: structure and portability can be limited, and costs may increase as you grow.
Static site generator: Hugo, Jekyll, Eleventy, etc. You write notes as files (often Markdown) and a tool builds the site. Great for speed, low hosting cost, and long-term control. Trade-off: initial setup and publishing can feel “developer-ish” unless you already have a workflow.
If you like the control of a custom notes app (tags, full-text search, private/public posts, team login) but don’t want to build everything from scratch, a vibe-coding platform like Koder.ai can be a practical middle ground. You describe what you want in chat (data model, pages, permissions, editor), and it generates a working web app—typically React on the front end with a Go + PostgreSQL backend.
This can be useful if you want features beyond a typical CMS (like snapshots/rollback, planning mode, or easy source code export) while keeping setup time low.
Ask:
If you’re unsure, choose the option you can update in 10 minutes today, not the “perfect” system. A clean, consistent archive beats a fancy setup you avoid.
| Option | Pros for notes | Cons to watch | Cost range | Publish time (you) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CMS | ||||
| Site builder | ||||
| Static site | ||||
| Custom app (e.g., Koder.ai) |
(Once you pick, you’ll define a simple site structure in the next sections.)
A learning notes site succeeds when it feels effortless to read. Fancy visuals age quickly; a clear, consistent system makes your notes usable months later—especially when you’re skimming for a specific insight.
Start with three decisions you won’t revisit every week:
This “minimum system” reduces design debt and keeps new notes visually consistent without effort.
Optimize for scanning and deep reading:
If you include diagrams or screenshots, treat them as optional—not the primary way the note communicates.
A consistent template makes publishing faster and makes your archive easier to reuse. A simple structure:
Summary — the one-paragraph takeaway.
Context — why you were learning this (project, decision, problem).
Lessons — the key points, framed as principles or “watch-outs.”
Next steps — what you’ll try, measure, or revisit.
You can also add a small metadata line at the top (date, topic, status: “draft/evergreen”).
Accessibility is mostly good UX:
These choices make your notes easier for everyone—and make your site feel more polished without extra design work.
A founder’s notes site should feel stable and “always there.” The setup you do once—domain, hosting, and a few defaults—prevents future headaches and makes sharing links effortless.
Choose a domain that’s easy to say out loud and easy to type. Common options:
Prefer .com when available, but don’t force it—clarity beats perfection. Avoid hyphens, tricky spelling, and overly clever phrases that you’ll need to explain.
Whether you use a CMS, static site, or site builder, look for these basics:
https:// with no manual work).If your platform supports “preview deployments,” use them. Seeing a change before it goes live makes publishing calmer and faster.
If you build a custom app, prioritize the same reliability features. For example, Koder.ai supports deployment/hosting, custom domains, and snapshots with rollback—useful when you want to ship quickly without babysitting infrastructure.
Set these up as soon as the site exists:
/sitemap.xml so search engines can discover new notes.Assume anything you publish can be copied. Don’t include customer names, private metrics, internal screenshots, credentials, or “non-public but obvious” details. When in doubt, write the insight and remove identifying context—or keep the page private until you’re confident it’s safe.
A learning-notes site isn’t trying to “win Google.” It’s trying to be findable later—by you, your team, and the few people who’d genuinely benefit. The goal is clarity, consistency, and a light layer of SEO hygiene.
Start with the basics you’ll actually maintain:
/notes/pricing-page-patterns over date-heavy or auto-generated slugs.If you ever rename a note, try to keep the URL the same (or set a redirect) so internal links don’t break.
Treat each note like a mini-article:
This improves readability and makes it easier for search engines and internal search to understand the page.
Make linking a default step in your workflow:
Not every note should be indexed. If a page is personal, half-baked, or contains sensitive details, consider:
If your platform supports it, add a simple search box. Prioritize fast, typo-tolerant search over complex filters—your future self will thank you.
A learning notes site only works if publishing feels lightweight. The goal is to reduce decisions so you can move from “I learned something” to “it’s on the site” in minutes.
Use a four-stage pipeline that matches how your brain already works:
If you stick to this loop, you’ll avoid the trap of “perfect later” notes that never ship.
Pick one place to draft, then make publishing predictable.
For syncing, keep it boring:
/notes/inbox and /notes/published) synced via iCloud/Dropbox, orIf you’re building a custom notes site (rather than using an off-the-shelf CMS), consider whether your workflow needs things like private/public toggles, role-based access, or a “planning mode” for drafting content structure before you implement it. Tools like Koder.ai can help you prototype that workflow quickly and still keep the option to export the source code later.
Before you hit publish, confirm:
Default to posting short notes (150–400 words). Later, you can merge several notes into a longer guide and link it from your hub pages. Shipping small builds momentum—and momentum is what keeps a notes site alive.
A learning-notes site gets valuable when it stays current. The trick is to treat notes like living documents without turning maintenance into a second job.
When you revise a note, add a simple line near the top:
Keep updates lightweight: fix unclear wording, add a missing example, or correct a conclusion that didn’t hold up. If a note changes meaningfully, add a short “Update” paragraph (“I no longer agree with X because…”). Readers learn from your revisions.
Choose one approach and apply it everywhere so readers know what to expect.
Recommendation: correction notes (not silent edits).
This keeps trust high while still letting notes improve.
Your notes are raw material. A simple reuse loop:
When you reuse a note, link both ways: the essay should reference the source notes, and each source note should link to the derived piece.
Week 1: set the rules
Week 2: build momentum
Week 3: publish your first “bundle”
Week 4: tighten and iterate
After 30 days, you’ll have a small system that can grow without getting messy.
A founder’s learning notes site is a lightweight place to publish what you’re learning while building: experiments, customer insights, tools tested, and the reasoning behind decisions. It’s closer to a shareable personal knowledge base than a polished “content marketing” blog.
It’s not a marketing blog, press page, or a highlight reel of wins. It’s also not a real-time diary—you don’t need to publish every thought, only repeatable lessons and decisions that will matter later.
A practical default is you + future you. If you later find certain notes useful for recruiting, customers, or peers, you can make a curated subset public without changing your whole system.
Use a mixed model:
Rule of thumb: if it includes identifiable customer details, keep it private by default.
Choose the format you’ll actually maintain:
A reliable starter is chronological posts + tags, then add a few evergreen wiki-style pages as patterns emerge.
Start with a small, stable set:
Keep top navigation to 5–7 items max and rely on tags, search, and internal links for everything else.
Use categories as broad, stable buckets (5–8 total, e.g., Product, Sales, Hiring, Ops, Fundraising). Use tags for reusable specifics (tools, frameworks, recurring topics).
Practical rules:
Pick the platform that lets you publish in under 10 minutes when you’re busy.
Optimize for publishing speed, maintenance load, portability, and cost at 200+ notes.
Use a repeatable template:
Add lightweight metadata if helpful (date, status like draft/evergreen, last updated).
Keep SEO simple and focus on long-term findability:
/notes/pricing-page-patterns).The goal isn’t to “win Google”—it’s to help you and the right readers find the note later.