TL;DR: The website logistically didn’t make sense, especially with this blog being hosted on GitHub Pages and only accessible through the website.
After a good deal of consideration, I finally pulled the plug on my website which was hosted on the domain www.mxhit.dev. This website was up and running for only a year but the decision to migrate was based on first principles of software engineering – this should have been my approach from the beginning however my reasons at the time were valid.
Why did I develop a website?
I always wanted a website of my own since I was 13 years old. Lacking the knowledge, skills and resources at the time I resorted to platforms like WordPress and Blogger to secure the bragging rights of having a website. Now, as a Software Engineer, developing a website seemed like the easiest project I could undertake, and so I did. I took this project as an opportunity to get my hands dirty with React.js , a library I always wanted to learn. I also wanted to get a feel of CI/CD.
Structure of my website
Before kickstarting development, the idea was quite simple: My website should provide basic information about what I do, what my skillsets are, and my contact information. During the development phase, I considered adding my LinkedIn testimonials – because why not. It took me around 2 months to complete the development, and I released v1.0.0 almost a year ago.
Six months later, I released v1.1.0 which contained minor aesthetic changes.
Key takeaways from this project?
- React is an intuitive library for developing web apps. It was fun to work with.
- I liked Tailwind ’s approach of CSS although it has a long way to go in order to compete with Bootstrap.
- Deploying and maintaining through Netlify was a breeze.
- React was overkill for the scope of this project i.e., a read-only website for visitors.
- Adding pages or functionalities required a good amount of time to get things right.
- I completely overlooked blogging, something I enjoyed during my schooling years. Implementing a blog looked like an Herculean task now.
Alternatives
For my use-case, static-site generators like Jekyll
and Hugo
seemed very appealing. I decided to go with Hugo purely on the basis of good documentation and this amazing minimalistic theme
. I developed and hosted this blog just a few days after the release of v1.1.0. Getting the entire blog up and running only took me a day and adding content was only a matter of few seconds, including new pages – this also encourages me to write more. In the near future, I intend to add a Projects section to this blog and the ease with which I can set it up is laughable.
Final decision
Coming around to first principles for my case, all I needed was a decent-looking website with ease of management. I could have gone the vanilla route by using just HTML, CSS and JavaScript but that would have become a pain point whenever I wanted to change a few things here and there – which was the case with React. Also, having two separate websites was a bad look.
So, I took the decision of migrating everything here and not renewing my domain. The website still lives on at mxhit.netlify.app and will be added to the Projects section soon. I am happy I got to learn React and CI/CD through this website, and I have since made a few private projects using React and Tailwind.