Distilling 20 Years of Professional Expierience into a 2-page document is a lot like trying to keep a dog in a bathtub. I wanted to create a website that could expand on that basic information and provide a bit more insight into what I do, and how I do it.
An Online Resume
I wanted this to be a lot more than just an HTML version of my resume. I want it to be a living document, one that I maintain over time, not just as a showcase for potential employment.
Buy or build?
There is no shortage of free and nearly free templates that one can use to build a site like mine. I choose to build it from scratch as both a fun personal project and also as a showcase.
While I am not a developer by trade, I still spend a lot of time in and around code. I believe being able to work with and understand the latest frameworks and technologies, I will be better able to work with clients and staff who do. I may not win any hackathons, but I am still quite comfortable working on a command line.
React, Vue, Svelte, Vanilla HTML?
Next.JS version 13 was released right around the same time I decided to build this site. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to jump back into the ecosystem. I chose Tailwind CSS for styling.
Sections
I wanted the site to have sections for my resume (of course), a blog, which is what you are reading, a project section that briefly explains some of the bigger projects I have undertaken over the years (both personal and professional) and links to other things that intrest me. My other love is music production, so I figured I would link to another site I use for that.
Inspiration
The guys over at Vercel have a bunch of templates that can be used to scaffold a site. One of those was an App playground. It shows all the new functionality possible using their new (in beta) App directory.
I stole this. Filed off the serial numbers and based my site off of it's layout. Some of the features it highlighted were ones I wanted to include in this site. Thanks guys!
Here is a link to that project.
The Blog
I went back and forth between using a CMS like Sanity, or using a markdown based system. I decided to go with the markdown based blog system for now. I really wanted to create the site by hand, and learning how to work with flat markdown files seemed like a good way to gain a lot of knowledge. It was.
I did not follow one single tutorial, but took bits from quite a few to build a system that works best for me. I plan on adding more on that process soon.
The Nuts and Bolts
- Framework: Next.JS
- Styling: Tailwind CSS
- Editor: VS Code
- Hosting: Vercel
- DNS / Proxy: Cloudflare
- Repo: Github