Begin personal website example app

⏱ This tutorial is an introductory walkthrough of creating a personal website on Begin. It should take less than 5 minutes.

Introduction

Hello there, Beginner!

This tutorial walks through setting up a fast, beautiful, custom personal site running on Begin. It uses example code that demonstrates server-side rendering, shared components, and static assets.

Prerequisites

You will need to have git and Node.js installed to your local computer to follow along with this tutorial. (Learn more about installing git and installing Node.js.)

You'll also need a GitHub account. (Learn more about signing up with GitHub.)

This tutorial also assumes some familiarity with such things as:

• Text editors
• Terminal / CLI
• Git and version control
• General software development using JavaScript

You do not need to be an expert in any of these things in order to follow along and make a new personal website with Begin!

Let's get started!

Get stoked, here's a little preview of your new site:

Getting started

Create your new personal website

First, click the Deploy to Begin button below. This starts the process of authorizing Begin with your GitHub account. (You may be prompted to log into GitHub, and/or be asked to create a Begin username.)

Name your app & repo

You'll then be prompted to name your new app and repository – this is optional, feel free to use the default app and repo name if you like!

Note: your Begin app name and repository name cannot be changed later.

Once you've clicked the Create... button, Begin will spin up your new project on GitHub (under github.com/{your GH username}/{your repo name}).

By default your Begin app repo is created as a public GitHub repo; it can be set to private by granting Begin additional permissions from this screen (or later from the Settings screen found in the left nav of your Begin app).

Your first deploy

After creating your app, you'll be taken to its Activity stream. Welcome to the main backend interface of your Begin app!

From the Activity view, you'll be able to watch your app build & deploy in real-time. Any time you push to master, you'll see a new build get kicked off in Begin.

Each build undergoes a number of predefined build steps (learn more about build steps here); these build steps may install your app's dependencies (install), check your code's syntax for issues (lint), generate any files or assets needed to run your app (build), and/or run an automated test suite (test).

If no build steps fail, then the build containing your latest commit to master is automatically deployed to your staging environment.

Go ahead and click the Staging link in the upper left corner of your left nav to open your new app's staging URL. You should now see your personal site:

💡 Learn more! Head here to dig deeper into covers build pipelines, git tagging, and more.

Make your first commit

If you'd like to jump right into making your first commit and running your first build, click the Edit on GitHub button. This will open your app's code in GitHub and allow you to make a quick change.

Look for this code, and try editing your basic bio (like your name or location):

// Customize your site by changing the data below
exports.handler = async function Index () {
  let body = Main({
    /**
     * Basic bio
     */
    fullname: 'Your Name', // ← Start by adding your name!
    title: 'My personal site!',
    occupation: 'Artist & Photographer',
    location: 'West Glacier, MT',
    bio: 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...',

Click the commit changes button on GitHub, and head back to your Activity view to watch it build.

When it's done, don't forget to see your changes live in your staging environment!

Get set up locally

Next let's get your new site running in your local environment (i.e. the computer you work on).

First, head to your GitHub repo (from the first card in your Activity, or from the left nav). Find the clone or download button and copy the git URL.

Then head to your terminal and clone your repo to your local filesystem.

git clone https://github.com/your-github-username/your-new-begin-app.git

Once you've got your project cloned on your local machine, cd into the project directory, install your dependencies, and start the local dev server:

cd your-new-begin-app
npm install
npm start

You should see a localhost link in your terminal – go ahead and visit that in your browser.

That's all you need to do preview your changes locally before pushing them to staging!

Project structure

Now that your app is live on staging and running locally, let's take a quick look into how the project itself is structured so you'll know your way around. Here are the key folders in the source tree of your personal website:

.
├── public/
└── src/
    ├── http/
    │   └── get-index/
    └── views/

Let's go over each of these directories and how you may use them:

public/

The public directory where you'll add images (like the background image for your site) and any other static assets or files you want to make publicly accessible in your app.

Each time your app deploys, the contents of this folder will automatically be published to your app's static asset bucket (on S3) as well as Begin's CDN.

Exercise caution! The full contents of this folder will be copied with each deploy, overwriting any existing files with the same name.

src/http/get-index/

The cloud function that handles requests to your site is found at src/http/get-index/.

Some Begin apps are inert static web sites – but not this one. Your personal website is built on a small, fast, individually executing cloud function that handles your HTTP requests and responses. (We call those HTTP functions, for short.)

The HTTP function that handles requests to the root of your app (GET /) is found in src/http/get-index/.

src/views/

By default, the contents of src/views/ gets copied into each of your project's GET HTTP functions (at node_modules/@architect/views for Node, or vendor/views for Ruby and Python) whenever you start the local dev server (or deploy your app).

This means the modules in this folder can be used by any GET HTTP function in your app.

For example, here's how you'd require src/views/main.js:

let layout = require('@architect/views/main')

💡 Learn more! Head here to dig deeper into the project structure of Begin apps.

Customize your site

Now for the fun part! Let's customize your personal website and really make it your own.

You've already changed the default name. Now let's add your social media links and change the background image.

As you saw earlier, /src/http/get-index/index.js is a great place to get started updating the content of your site. Open that file in your editor:

Now let's input your social media handles in place of the dummy data. Go ahead and change the values of the email, twitter, linkedin, instagram, and facebook keys – or remove any you don't want to keep.

// src/http/get-index/index.js

const Main = require('@architect/views/main.js')
const staticAssetsHelper = require('./static-assets-helper')

// Customize your site by changing the data below
exports.handler = async function Index () {
  let body = Main({
    /**
     * Basic bio
     */
    fullname: 'Your Name', // ←  Start by adding your name!
    title: 'My personal site!',
    occupation: 'Artist & Photographer',
    location: 'West Glacier, MT',
    bio: 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Quis ipsum suspendisse ultrices gravida. Risus commodo viverra maecenas accumsan lacus vel facilisis.',

    /**
     * Contact / social
     * - Comment out any item below to remove it from your page
     */
    email: 'your@email.com',
    twitter: 'yourTwitter',
    linkedin: 'your-linkedin-name',
    instagram: 'yourInsta',
    facebook: 'your-facebook-name',

    /**
     * Layout
     */
    photographer: 'Ivana Cajina',
    service: 'Unsplash',
    credit: 'https://unsplash.com/@von_co',
    image: staticAssetsHelper('background.jpg')
    // or link to an external image URL such as ↓
    // image: 'https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1506535772317-9fdb71c959c6'
  })

  return {
    statusCode: 200,
    headers: {
      'content-type': 'text/html; charset=utf8',
      'cache-control': 'no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, max-age=0, s-maxage=0'
    },
    body
  }
}

View source

Now we'll update your background image. Grab a new one Unsplash (or wherever you please) and place it in the public/. Let's name this new image background-2.jpg.

Go back to /src/http/get-index/index.js and replace the current reference to background.jpg with background-2.jpg.

You may notice that your background image is being returned by a module named staticAssetHelper. This helper demonstrates how to load static assets with the correct URLs locally, in staging, and via the Begin CDN in production.

Ok, let's see the finished product. With your local dev server running (npm start), preview your site.

That's one beautiful personal website you've got there – customized to your liking! Time to deploy and show the world what you've just created.

Deploy your site

While not required, it's always a good idea to lint and run tests before pushing just to make sure you catch any errors:

npm run lint
npm t

Everything set? Now let's push this commit (and deploy the build to staging):

git add -A
git commit -am 'Just customizing my Begin site!'
git push origin master

Head on back to Begin and open your staging URL once your build is complete. Looking good? Excellent.

Now let's deploy to production: click the Deploy to production button in the upper left, pick a version, leave an optional message summarizing your changes, and Ship it!

When your next build is done, click the production link in the upper left corner to see the latest release of your app.

✨Tip: You can also deploy to production from your terminal by bumping your npm version (npm version [patch|minor|major] && git push origin) or by cutting a git tag (git tag -a 1.0.0 -m "1.0, here we come" && git push origin --tags)

Congratulations!

You've now got a shiny new personal website hosted on Begin – nice work.

Now go show it off – people need to see this thing!

Additional resources

• Expand the capabilities of your app:
  • Creating new routes
  • Add Begin Data
• Begin reference docs
• Get help:
  • Begin community
  • Issue tracker