Personal Website 101

Motivation

There is very little need to explain the benefits of personal website or a portfolio site, still, I would note down some:

• Personal Branding
• Blog Space
• Makes you discoverable on internet
• One stop resume which works for you
• Helps you learn new skills while building

Tech Stack

• Hugo Static Site Builder
• Plenty of themplates available at Hugo Themes
• Hosting at Github Pages
• Domain from Godaddy

Steps

• First learn the basics of Hugo and how it works by following Hugo Quickstart Guide
• Once somewhat comfortable with Markdown and Hugo, choose a template/theme for your site
  • You can create your custom theme as well.
• After choosing a theme, customize your site based on your need.
• Verify your site locally at http://localhost:1313 (Assuming you did not change the config)
• At this point, your stack is setup to build your site locally.
• Finish multiple iterations of changes till you are satisfied with the website you want to build.

Deployment

• Once site is built, it is time to host and deploy it somewhere.

Hosting

• There are multiple options to host your static website. Eg: Github pages, BitBucket, Netlify, GitLab
• In my case, I used GitHub Pages and deployed site at - hpj1992.github.io
• I use this site as a pre-production/staging environment for my site.
• Not including detailed information because there plenty of resources available online. Hugo instructions on hosting and deployment.

Domain

• Once you figure out the hosting issues, it is time to purchase a domain for your website.
• If you do not want specifc domain - which is perfectly valid - you can start sharing links from your hosted environment.
• If you do decide to purchase a domain, there are multiple options in this case as well and the best option varies based on individual. Eg: GoDaddy, Bluehost etc
• Some well known domain providers are listed here.
• I selected a domain with name:
  • Domain registration for 1 year with auto-renewel. Paid $10/year.
  • Privacy protection for domain for 1 year. Paid $10/year.
  • Did not opt for HTTPS certificate because I do not need it currently.
• Followed this youtube tutorial to link my GoDaddy domain to Github Pages.

End Result

• http://joshiharshit.com/
• The same blog is available here: http://joshiharshit.com/posts/2019/11/personal-website-101/