Building side projects is one of the best ways to sharpen your dev skills—and sometimes they even turn into something bigger.
Recently, I created a food recipe blog called Kaitlin With Honey where I share easy, delicious recipes anyone can try. But it was also a playground for testing out modern web performance, clean UI, and SEO-first architecture.
🏗️ The Tech Stack
Frontend: Plain HTML/CSS + some JS sprinkles (keeping it lightweight)
Images: Optimized with WebP + lazy loading
Hosting: Static on Netlify (fast global CDN)
SEO: Structured data, meta tags, and preloading critical assets
🚀 Speed & Core Web Vitals
I obsessed over loading speed. Using Lighthouse, I brought LCP under 1.5s on mobile by:
Compressing hero images
Using system fonts with fallbacks
Deferring non-critical JS
🔍 Lessons Learned
✅ Less is more: Minimal scripts & plugins mean fewer long tasks.
✅ Semantic HTML: Helps accessibility and SEO.
✅ Content first: Even the fanciest design flops without genuinely useful content.
🎯 Try It Yourself
If you want inspiration (or just crave a quick dinner idea), you can peek at the site here: kaitlinwithhoney.com
Would love to hear if you’ve used personal projects to test new stacks or performance tweaks—drop them below!
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