This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Melanie Richards, whose blog can be found at melanie-richards.com/blog.

Tired of RSS? Read this in your browser or sign up for the newsletter.

People and Blogs is supported by the "One a Month" club members.

If you enjoy P&B, consider becoming one for as little as 1 dollar a month.

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

I’m a Group Product Manager co-leading the core product at Webflow, i.e. helping teams visually design and build websites. My personal mission is to empower people to make inspiring, impactful, and inclusive things on the web. That’s been the through line of my career so far: I started out as a designer at a full-service agency called Fuzzco, moved to the web platform at Microsoft Edge, continued building for developers at Netlify, and am now aiming to make web creation even more democratic with the Webflow platform.

I transitioned from design to product management while at Microsoft Edge. I wanted to take part in steering the future of the web platform, instead of remaining downstream of those decisions. I feel so lucky to have worked on new features in HTML, ARIA, CSS, and JavaScript with other PMs and developers in the W3C and WHATWG.

I’m a builder at heart, so I love to work on webby side projects as well as a whole bevy of analog hobbies: knitting, sewing, weaving, sketchbooking, and journaling.

What's the story behind your blog?

I have a couple primary blogs right now:

• melanie-richards.com/blog, simply the blog that lives at my main website. I post here about the web, design, development, accessibility, product management, etc. One practice I’ve been keeping for a few years now is my monthly Learning Log. These posts are a compendium of what I’ve been shipping or making, what I’ve been learning, side quests, neat links around the internet, and articles I’ve been reading. When I’m in a particularly busy period (as was the case in 2025; my first child was born in September), this series is my most consistent blogging practice.
• making.melanie-richards.com: this is the blog where I post about my aforementioned analog projects. Quite a lot of sewing over the past year!

From 2013–2016 I also had a blog and directory called Badass Lady Creatives (wish I had spent more than five minutes on the name, haha). This featured women who were doing cool things in various “creative” industries. At the time it seemed like every panel, conference lineup, and group project featured all or mostly dudes. The blog was a way to push back on that a little bit and highlight people who were potentially overlooked. Since then gender representation (for one) seems to have gotten a bit better in these industries. But the work and joy of celebrating diverse, inspiring talent is never done!

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

Big “yeet to production” vibes for me! I use Obsidian to scribble down my thoughts and write an initial draft. Obsidian creates Markdown files, so I copy and paste those into Visual Studio Code (my code editor), add some images and make some tweaks, and then push to production. I really try not to overthink it too much. However, I will admit that I have a tons of drafts in Obsidian that never see the light of day. It can be cathartic enough just to scribble it down, even if I never publish the thought.

For my Learning Log posts, I use a Readwise => Obsidian workflow I describe in this blog post. Reader by Readwise is the app where I store and read all my RSS feeds and newsletter forwards.

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

“Parallel play” is the biggest, most joyful boon to my creativity. I love to be in the company of others as we independently work on our own projects side by side.

There’s a delicate balance when it comes to working on creative projects socially. For example, my mom, my aunt, and I often have Sew Day over FaceTime on Sundays. Everyone’s pretty committed to what they’re working on, so it’s easy to sew and talk and sing (badly 😂) at the same time. I also used to go to a local craft night that very sadly disbanded when the host shop changed hands.

For writing or coding, that takes a bit more mental focus for me. I started a Discord server with a few friends, which is dedicated to working on blog posts and side projects. We meet up once a month to talk about our projects (and shoot the breeze, usually about web accessibility and/or the goodness of dogs). Then we all log off the voice channel to go do the thing!

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

Both of these blogs use Eleventy and plain ol’ Markdown, and are hosted on Netlify. Some of my other side projects use a content management system (CMS) like Webflow’s CMS, or Contentful + Eleventy. Again, Webflow is my current employer.

I use a Netlify form for comments on my “Making” blog, and Webmentions for my main blog. I will probably pull out Webmentions from that code base: conceptually they’ve never really “landed” for me, and it would be nice to delete a ton of code.

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

I generally like my setup, though sometimes I think about migrating my “Making” blog onto a CMS. As far as CMSes go, I quite like Webflow’s: it’s straightforward and has that Goldilocks level of functionality for me. Some other CMSes I’ve tried have felt bloated yet seemed to miss obvious functionality out of the box.

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?**

I have a Bookshop.org affiliate link and it took me several years to meet the $20 minimum payout so…yeah I’ve never truly monetized my blogging! I find there’s freedom in giving away your thoughts for free.

As far as costs go, I have pretty low overhead: just paying for the domain name.

I’m fine with other folks monetizing personal blogs, though of course there’s a classy and not-classy way to do so. If monetizing is what keeps bloggers’ work on the open web, on sites they own and control, I prefer that over monetizing through walled gardens. Related: Substack makes it easy to monetize but there are some very compelling reasons to consider alternatives.

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

• Mandy Brown, Oliver Burkeman (technically a newsletter with a “view on web” equivalent), and Ethan Marcotte’s writing have been helping to fill my spiritual cup over the last couple years.
• Anh and Katherine Yang are doing neat things on their sites
• What Claudia Wore for a nostalgic pick; I’d love to recreate some of these outfits sometime. Thank you Kim for keeping the blog up!
• Sarah Higley would be a great next interview. She blogs less frequently, but always at great depth and thoughtfulness on web accessibility. Web developers can learn quite a lot on more involved controls and interactions from Sarah.

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

This is highly topical: I’m currently scheming about a directory site listing “maker” blogs! So many communities in the visual arts and crafts are stuck on social media platforms they don’t even enjoy, beholden to the whims of an algorithm. I’d like to connect makers in a more organic way. If you’re a crafter who would like to be part of this, feel free to fill out this Google form!

Keep exploring

Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed.

If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 134 interviews.

People and Blogs is possible because kind people support it.