This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Ashley Childress
First of all — thank you. 🙏
For real. This community has been nothing but encouraging, and it was a huge surprise to end up in the top seven last week. I didn’t expect it, but it’s appreciated more than you know. 🫶
TL;DR
If you're looking for a quick and efficient way to increase traffic to your DevTo blog posts (or anywhere else with a little tweaking)? Try my 10-minute DevTo crawly mirror. Here's how it works:
-
Clone the repo. Enter your DevTO username as an env variable in the repo. Delete the existing
gh-pagesbranch. - Scheduled GHA Workflow off-peak or manually trigger.
- Static HTML hosted via GitHub Pages
- Canonical back to Dev
Starting With Nothing 🔦
So, this entire thing started with a conversation.
🦄 About what? I honestly can’t remember now — Copilot, debugging, something in that ballpark. Doesn’t matter.
But somehow — like so many of my rabbit holes — it mutated and morphed until I wasn't exactly at the same place I had started. I really can't explain the series of events that happened after that. I blame it on curiosity more than anything, but I did the one thing I swore I'd never do: I asked ChatGPT to do a quick search — pull one of my posts.
And... nothing. Like the post didn’t exist. 🕳️
Okay. 😅 Fine. Let’s take a step back. Next, I went straight to Google and typed the same thing. Results were better — sure. Scroll, scroll, scroll... and there it was. My post. Not at the top, but alive. Win. 😏
🦄 Real talk: Do I care about being #1? No, not in the slightest. Honestly, I love my invisibility bubble — keeps things peaceful in my corner of the internet.
But here’s the thing: invisibility and AI don’t mix. Because when I need an answer, I don’t open a browser anymore. I yell at my phone: “Hey Google!” Or I pop into ChatGPT or Gemini.
If my posts don’t show up there, they might as well not even exist. 🫤
Déjà Vu 🔮
So I’m now blessed with the knowledge that my posts are basically hiding out in the Room of Requirement — you know it’s there, but only if the stars align. And that makes it hard to share the advice I keep repeating everywhere else that will listen:
- “Yes, you can use it for debugging.”
- “Of course it can generate the tests.”
- “Docs? Oh my god, PLEASE let it write the docs.”
By the time I’ve said it for the fifth time, it feels like I’m stuck in reruns.
🦄 Honestly, some days I feel like I need a theme song: “Previously, on AI Adventures with Ashley...” 🎵🎶
Sure. Sometimes, I let AI run wild (it's more fun that way!). My Coding Agent kills it with documentation. I even built a chat mode that plays architect — reverse engineers a repo and spits out mermaid diagrams like it’s dealing cards in Vegas. That one runs in GitHub Actions, then opens a PR, and I'll merge once everything checks out.
But the everyday stuff? It’s not dramatic. It’s small instructions, nudges, prompts. Rinse, repeat, coffee, repeat again. ☕️ It's slow, incremental improvements to be just a little better than yesterday. 🤏
And what drives me absolutely up the wall? The extremes. Either “AI will replace every dev tomorrow” or “AI is useless, don’t bother.”
🦄 Honestly, it’s like sitting court-side at Quidditch — the little guy zips across the field so fast you think you’ve finally caught up, but nope. He’s already off to something else... and it’s almost always completely wrong, too. 😅
Writing It Down 📕
So my solution: write it down. That’s what most of these blog posts are. Whatever comes up that week — whether it’s me digging, someone else asking, or just another repeated question — if I haven’t covered it already, give me a week. I'll get there.
The beauty of this system? Instead of explaining everything for the tenth time, I can just say: “Glad you’re trying this. I think my blog might help — here’s the link. Let me know if you’ve got questions.”
See. Simple, right? 🙂↕️ But even that wasn’t enough, because usually by the time I arrived on scene things were in somewhat of a state already. Mostly because what AI was helping with had a knowledge cut-off of January and everything else is wading through Microsoft or GitHub docs looking for any little nibble.
So I set out to find a way to make my DevTo posts truly crawly — without Dante's DevOps nightmares playing on repeat at the top of every hour.
🦄 Sure, I briefly considered the real solution — custom website, full hosting stack, the whole front-end shebang. But I'm a backend engineer for a reason! My personal site is designed for APIs not MUI. I'd really prefer to keep it that way!
The Hack in Action 💻
So, I did what any other respectable developer would do with an extra 15 minutes and spark of an idea: I hacked it. What do you get with 3 hours, a solid round of "will OCD win again?" and ChatGPT + GitHub Copilot tag team special? Exactly zero upkeep — mission accomplished. ✅
GHA cron → Dev API → static HTML → GitHub Pages → robots.txt
That’s it. No CSS. No fancy layout. Just static content, scheduled on a daily push. Best of all? ChatGPT could finally find my posts. Gemini too.
🦄 True story: I spent longer arguing with Leonardo to make a banner image than I did setting up the whole mirror.
Add A Little Sparkle ✨
I'm in no way an expert when it comes to SEO or even scraping in general. I did happen across this tidbit in the 15 minutes of research I did on the subject. I'm still testing this to see what the impact looks like, but seems promising. 😇
In your DevTo settings, you have the option to use the current rich-text markdown editor we all know and love or, you can switch to the legacy version. It's kind of an all or nothing deal, as far as I can tell. So you either have it everywhere or nowhere. But, it does give you access to the yaml front-matter for your posts and the ability to define your own brief description instead of relying on the first ~160 words you post.
It seems like an awfully lot of work though, and I've kinda gotten used to the new markdown buttons (that I never use). So my solution? Let's just hit buttons until I find one that works. 🤓
What's Mine is Yours 🍀
Whether you’re after more profile views or just tired of repeating yourself like me, this trick works. You can have my quick and easy DevTO-Mirror running in less than 10 minutes. Just copy it, fork it, clone it, star it — whatever you like. And please, avoid Dante’s DevOps while you’re at it. 🔥😈
This post is now searchable 🛡️
Responsibly indexed by me & the robots. Fueled by coffee ☕️, steered by OCD, and completely bypassed the 9th circle of hell. 🔥🚫
🦄 No, I'm still not finished getting this character exactly where I want her to be for the banners. But they're so close that I had to use it. Minor tweaks still and an AI character (or several) to tag along still to come 💖
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Ashley Childress
Ashley Childress | Sciencx (2025-08-16T12:52:04+00:00) Weekend Hack: Making My Blog AI-Searchable (No Flames Required) 🔥🚫. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/08/16/weekend-hack-making-my-blog-ai-searchable-no-flames-required-%f0%9f%94%a5%f0%9f%9a%ab/
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