Farewell to my first website
It is done. After four years of updating and maintaining my very first portfolio website, I've finally decided to call it quits.
What a great run it has been.
My first website was a novel to me. When I first created it, I was finishing my second to last quarter of school (December 2019). Earlier that year, I finished a class on web development and found out quite frankly that I wasn't good at it. I had a hard time getting the design I wanted to show on the screen properly (not to mention getting the same page to fit nicely on mobile phones or tablets).
And so, imagine my surprise when I came across a tool that helped me generate a static site that I could use. The tool that I used to generate my site is called Hugoblox (though when I first started using it, it was called Academic Hugo).
Hugoblox worked wonders. I didn't need to style nor come up with javascript in order to make a site. It just worked through templates and the Hugo static site generator sitting behind it.
Outgrowing Hugoblox
If my original tech stack was so nice, why did I take it offline?
To put simply, it was because I started getting busy. I didn't have enough time nor energy to keep up to date with new features that Hugoblox came out with, and at one point (in mid-2024), the old repository that my code was importing modules from was entirely deleted. This meant that I couldn't even build my outdated site anymore. I looked through the changelog between my website and the new version, and eventually decided that spending the time to upgrade wasn't worth it for two reasons:
- I was perfectly happy with how my old website worked and looked. I don't need the new features.
- Even if I did upgrade, Hugoblox still has a hard dependency on core templating modules and Hugo, so I'll probably run into the same problem in the future.
I think it's true when everyone says that getting older opens your eyes to how valuable your time is!
Even with all of that said, I think it's evident that I haven't given up maintaining my own site. If so, you wouldn't be able to read this post!
Website 2.0
What's different with my new site? For one, look at the awesome minimalistic styling! I have to give full credits to the Tailwind UI team here. They've not only managed to design beautiful components, but also a template that is easy to modify to your own liking.
Most importantly, the tech stack used to power this site has less overall dependencies.
- The main framework the site uses is NextJS (React framework with cool features like UI streaming)
- The main styling is through Tailwind CSS (CSS framework on steroids; works just like inline CSS)
- The blog markup is compiled through MDX and integrates with JSX (i.e. integrates with React)
So basically, you can get by using this to power your own site if you have an understanding of React and CSS styling. There are bonus features provided by NextJS and whatnot, but they're not required. Admittedly, your main limitation is how much you know about React development, however, if you do choose to go down this path, you won't be constrained by niche modules or dependencies like Hugo or core Hugoblox.
You can get into situations where you need to figure out what dependencies work with each other when using React, but a lot of these issues are shown when you attempt to run or build your website through node. Package deletion in the JavaScript ecosystem is rare, especially if the package has been up for more than 72 hours and has existing users (see npm policy).
Final thoughts
Overall, I'm happy that I finally made the switch to the new site. It's sleek, performant, and highly customizable. I'm excited to start adding other features on my radar such as pagination support, etc.