I delayed the thought of making a personal site or portfolio for a long time. The main reason was that I didn't think that I had enough experience or projects to show off. On top of that, I needed a professional domain. So when .dev domains came out I got one basically forcing myself to build a personal site.
I gathered most of my projects, some of which I found scattered throughout different folders and uploaded them on GitHub (The ones that weren't already there). Then I started thinking of the design 🤔. I am not an artistic person but I was sure that with my personal site I wanted to show a part of me so I decided to include things that I like in general, not just development oriented. I used Adobe XD for designing as I am on Windows and I find it a pretty good replacement for Sketch. I finally settled for what I would call a minimalistic site. My main inspiration was Ali Spittel's article Building a Kickass Portfolio. Thank you @aspittel .
Then I probably made my first mistake. I didn't even think about what I was going to use to make it. I just used ReactJS even though it is so minimalistic that it can be created very easy without it. I also built a backend using Express.js for handling the form submission. I used an npm package called nodemailer to mail myself the form data. On top of that, I also added a Matomo script for tracking, optimized for a SPA and an opt-out option. The final step was building and deploying it on my RaspberryPi 3 B+ (which I love so much), getting a free SSL certificate, figuring out how to make NGINX serve content on two different domains, setting up Cloudflare (🍰) and automatically updating the IP inside Cloudflare because I have a dynamic IP. Really, apart from setting up Cloudflare, the backend part was way more challenging than the frontend. But, after all of that, I am proud of what I got.
Now, it is your turn. I ask you to check out my site and tell me: what do you like, what you don't like, what you would do differently, and overall, what are your thoughts on my site and my projects. 🤗
Here is the site: https://david-sima.dev/
Thank you for your time! 😄
Top comments (4)
Overall, I think the site looks very good and performed very smoothly - great job!
Getting a bit nitpicky:
About me:
Projects:
Thriving Citiesproject. It brings attention to the fact that you didn't win instead of focusing on what you learned & what the end product is.I love the use of the icons to demonstrate what you used to build it, so I'll leave you with a closing remark about the icons:
Thank you for your answer!
That is very good advice. I will change project descriptions and I will take a look to the about me section. Maybe making the React logo more transparent will fix the problem. Also, I should give some love to the other techs as you suggested.
Thank you again! 😄 I am glad that you liked it.
First off, great article. I can relate because I have been stalling on creating my portfolio website as well. I do see your point and so I'm currently working on my own site.
You're website looks good. I like the simplicity and how you show a part of your personality.
Not to be overly critical here but I would include more spacing between the project section and the contact. I just think having even white space adds to the style of the overall design. Just my two cents.
Thank you :) I will take that into consideration.