Exactly one year ago I asked the dev community what tech they used to build their personal website/portfolio and later compiled the answers.
So to carry on the tradition (tradition!):
What tech did you use to build your personal website/portfolio?
Bonus question if you answered last year: has it changed?
Feel free to shamelessly plug your website/portfolio if you answer!
Latest comments (55)
I used Next and Node and it works fine. Next time I will try Gatsby because I am yet to use it in production.
I used Hugo and Gitlab Pages for a site generator and hosting, along with org-mode for my website. The university I attend has a program for hosting websites, so when I leave the university in May, I'll be setting up a custom domain. I am still working on it, along with some projects to actually add to my portfolio (namely, my first full project is a curses RSS aggregator written in python).
n3rd.github.io , I built it with noting complex, just plain 'ol HTML, CSS and JavaScript but spiced it up with a few eye catching into animations
I have an unusually simple setup: a pure HTML/CSS/JS site running on GitHub pages, because in my opinion that's really all you need. I haven't migrated since (though it's been tempting to switch to something like Netlify or Vercel), primarily because of GitHub's excellent handling of my domain. My root domain (micahlindley.com) is connected to the micahlt/micahlt.github.io repository, but I've grown to love the fact that every GitHub repo built in vanilla HTML/CSS/JS can be easily deployed to Pages with no additional domain setup. It's simple and elegant, and it gives me a challenge to keep the site performant without utilizing server-side rendering or React.
I did the same thing with the Github pages. pages.github.com/ It was just a really easy way to quickly get up and running. And not needing to worry about maintaining a domain was a big selling point for me.
I didn't do the extra layer of fancy though that you did to have your root domain connected to your repo. I like that extra touch :)
torik17.github.io/
This year I rebuilt my personal site, justmatt.co. I challenged myself to see how small and fast I could make the final result, and so I decided to use a static site generator. I eventually settled on Metalsmith because it's written in Node and has a large number of plugins that make development easy.
I started with Bootstrap for the layout, but I only included the grid system, which comes out to about ~7kb. I focused on a lightweight design, taking care to only include code and resources that were actually being used on each individual page. I implemented lazy-loading for images and an image-scaling pipeline in my site generator that creates several resolutions of each image in both WebP and jpeg format to minimize downloads to the client.
In the end, a typical article on my site is ~150kb gzipped with a header image and loads in under a second on my laptop. The basic article template with with a small amount of content and no image is ~80kb gzipped. I'm pretty proud of what I ended up with and I think it will serve me for a long time.
Still doing GitHub pages and Jekyll. Visit at canro91.github.io
I use Ghost for my two blogs (candost.blog and bitekdunya.com) and Jimdo for my portfolio page (candostdagdeviren.com). I like the both options. I just finished the work on my blogs. They are working with DigitalOcean the setup was really easy.
I built both of my current sites with plain CSS/HTML/JS. ๐ด
kay.is
fllstck.dev
Both hosted on GitHub.
Flask for backend, and MaterializeCSS with custom SCSS styles (including vanilla JS and anime.js) for frontend stuff
In hindsight, I should have taken the bullet and use NodeJS for my backend as well, but that's for my next web-based project. With python as your backend language, frontend technologies are always an afterthought.
I built mine, andreigatej.dev, with Gatsby and I could say it was a pretty smooth experience building something with it.
It also made me more curious about how it works under the hood, so I hope one day I'll find the time to explore.
dzhavat.github.io/ using GitHub Pages. It's simple, doesn't require me to learn a lot of new things, easy to make changes, enjoying it a lot. :)
I didn't answer last year, but at that time I was hosting briancaffey.github.io on GitHub Pages and building the site with Jekyll. This year I moved my site from Jekyll to Nuxt.js using their static site generator mode and @nuxtjs/content git-based headless CMS. In switching to Nuxt.js I also learned TailwindCSS which has been fun to learn and use.
I also added Drift to my site and have been having interesting conversations with people who reply to my automated welcome message. I kept Disqus for comments, but instead of loading the Disqus widget automatically, I only load it when a visitor clicks on a "Show Disqus Comments" button at the end of an article with comments.
Some other integrations are MailChimp for a custom newsletter signup form that I have been using to slowly grow an audience and formsubmit.co which I use for a simple contact form.
Google Analytics and Search console for learning about users behavior on my site, what articles are popular and what users were searching for to arrive at my site.
My portfolio is alvarosaburido.dev and it's build using Vue along Nuxt.js and a personal approach to utility-driven css (similar to what TailwindCSS does)
I'm waiting for Nuxt to support v3 of vue to refactor and use TailwindCSS for styling.
Everyone is welcome to my pancake planet ๐ฅ ๐
I've always liked more abstract, unique, and original portfolios ๐ extra points for creativity ๐
I use Eleventy for my personal website kareldesmet.be and am hosting it on Netlify. The deployment process on Netlify was smooth as silk. And I love Eleventy because you get a lot of the "oomph" from Gatsby or similar solutions, but without a lot of the "aargh". Admittedly, this is based on a very limited effort to give those others SSG's a go, so I'm contemplating that mastergatsby.com course from Wes Bos.
Nonetheless, I'm thinking about migrating it back to a server-side rendered (Node.js) solution, just to get some more experience in that domain.
Ooo I've not heard of Eleventy, I'll have to check it out. Definitely had a lot of 'aargh' with Gatsby but that has mostly been down to configuring plugins and a couple of gotchas. When it works though it is a pleasure to use!
Definitely do! I think most people will be pleased by the simplicity of it, whilst still having a lot of options to get where you want to go.
My website garybell.co.uk is built using (and hosted on) Ghost.org and uses a free theme.
I've only added content this year, but considering options for next year.
What attracted you to using ghost.org as a solution?
I wanted to remove the maintenance and patching of the application and infrastructure from myself. Mainly so I could focus on content.
Performance was a big factor of me giving it a go. I used to use WordPress and was tired of having to use plugins for everything useful (like SEO).
I also like that I can write in markdown, which WordPress doesn't (or didn't at the time) do.
I do, however, find it expensive for my audience size. That's why I'm looking at options at the moment.