Out with the old, in with the new

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It was time for a change. I had built my first portfolio site in 2019 after completing CS50’s Web Development course but it had slowly become outdated and was in need of a revamp. I had built the site using Flask, a Python framework, and hosted it on Heroku’s free tier, but as I didn’t update it often and had since moved away from Python to PHP, updating it had become a hassle.

In 2020, I toyed with the idea of rebuilding my portfolio site using another Python framework, Django, as I wanted to have a blog and other CMS functionality. As soon as I got Wagtail up and running and began prototyping the site, I lost interest in the project.

In with the new

At the start of 2022, I decided to start this project again and chose to host the website through GitHub Pages, using Jekyll, the static site generator. Although I may consider other options in the future, I have really enjoyed using Jekyll and the features it provides.

AWS

To keep the repo light for deployment, I chose to store my images on AWS S3 as their free tier is extremely generous and their pricing afterwards is fair. This is paired with CloudFront, which allows me to access and link to my images via a subdomain.

To keep file sizes down, I use sharp to convert images to JPEG, WEBP, and AVIF, and the AWS SDK to automatically upload the images to my S3 bucket.

Cloudflare

Towards the end of development, I decided to switch from GitHub Pages to Cloudflare Pages for hosting. I like the integration with the GitHub repo and automatic deployment with each commit, as well as the ability to create different sites for testing and development branches. Additionally, I was already using Cloudflare for DNS and SSL certificates, making the switch a no-brainer.

Future plans

Right now, I’m really pleased with the website setup and the technology behind it so I don’t plan on changing frameworks or hosting provider in the near future. However, I am looking forward to adding more functionality to my site through service workers (Cloudflare Workers) and APIs to query databases. The possibilities for adding to a static, lightweight site with the multitude of services available are endless, and I look forward to exploring them!