Great job on your website. I like the creative concept with the terminal UI and desktop icon tabs. Taking into consideration that you're a newbie, even though the site is a little bit rough around the edges, but the style and the idea makes up for it, in my opinion. Those rough edges will smooth out as you get more experienced, so keep at it. It takes time to learn how to create truly delightful, performant and smooth UI.
Here is some advice:
"About me" in the nav doesn't really need to be a dropdown
Nav text contrast on the homepage might be poor (white text on light gradient background). You can use many tools out there to check
Avoid hamburger menu on mobile if you can. Save users an extra click (or tap) by having a fixed nav with all links present
Your "PJ" logo can also be a link to homepage. I've instinctively kept clicking on the link, but nothing happened.
"Hiring" page feels a bit empty when it's opened. Maybe have one of the tabs active by default?
It reminds me a lot how I started out (I've also used Bootstrap when starting out). I've actually wrote a post here about my own personal website and how I've changed it and improved it through the years. Maybe you can get some ideas or see what you can apply to your own.
Thank you so much for taking the time to offer so much feedback!
Once I have a handle on React and React Router, I'm hoping to improve the performance and get everything to load nice and easy.
I will definitely change the navigation to remove the dropdown, add a home link to the "PJ" logo and improve contrast, and I'll definitely play around with the mobile menu to see if I can avoid the hamburger menu.
Additionally, I love the suggestion to have one of the tabs open by default, I can definitely implement that.
Thank you for sharing your post about the improvements you've made to your own personal website over time -- I really appreciate that you emphasized the details of the things you were missing, such as lazy loading, code minification, and image optimization. It's nice to see actual examples I can research rather than just "you need to improve your performance" lol, as well as seeing the progression you made in your tech stack over the years.
You mentioned that you used Bootstrap when starting out. Do you recommend getting away from CSS frameworks? Or is there another one that you prefer?
Thank you, glad you found the article useful and I'm happy to help! I really wanted to put things into perspective and show how you can be a code newbie and still create awesome stuff, but how your projects can progress over time.
I'm using CSS frameworks for fast prototyping on my own projects, when I want to focus more on functionality and have a nice UI out of the box and not to worry about it. For my personal site, I'd like to showcase my skills, so I prefer having a custom-built CSS. Also, custom built CSS might be lower in size because it would (ideally) only contain styles that are used on the site.
I've also heard a lot of good things about Tailwind, so I recommend checking that one out too.
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Great job on your website. I like the creative concept with the terminal UI and desktop icon tabs. Taking into consideration that you're a newbie, even though the site is a little bit rough around the edges, but the style and the idea makes up for it, in my opinion. Those rough edges will smooth out as you get more experienced, so keep at it. It takes time to learn how to create truly delightful, performant and smooth UI.
Here is some advice:
It reminds me a lot how I started out (I've also used Bootstrap when starting out). I've actually wrote a post here about my own personal website and how I've changed it and improved it through the years. Maybe you can get some ideas or see what you can apply to your own.
My personal website - from zero to hero in 5 years
Adrian Bece ・ Jan 21 ・ 11 min read
Great job, keep learning and experimenting and good luck!
Thank you so much for taking the time to offer so much feedback!
Once I have a handle on React and React Router, I'm hoping to improve the performance and get everything to load nice and easy.
I will definitely change the navigation to remove the dropdown, add a home link to the "PJ" logo and improve contrast, and I'll definitely play around with the mobile menu to see if I can avoid the hamburger menu.
Additionally, I love the suggestion to have one of the tabs open by default, I can definitely implement that.
Thank you for sharing your post about the improvements you've made to your own personal website over time -- I really appreciate that you emphasized the details of the things you were missing, such as lazy loading, code minification, and image optimization. It's nice to see actual examples I can research rather than just "you need to improve your performance" lol, as well as seeing the progression you made in your tech stack over the years.
You mentioned that you used Bootstrap when starting out. Do you recommend getting away from CSS frameworks? Or is there another one that you prefer?
Thank you, glad you found the article useful and I'm happy to help! I really wanted to put things into perspective and show how you can be a code newbie and still create awesome stuff, but how your projects can progress over time.
I'm using CSS frameworks for fast prototyping on my own projects, when I want to focus more on functionality and have a nice UI out of the box and not to worry about it. For my personal site, I'd like to showcase my skills, so I prefer having a custom-built CSS. Also, custom built CSS might be lower in size because it would (ideally) only contain styles that are used on the site.
I've also heard a lot of good things about Tailwind, so I recommend checking that one out too.