The problem:
I need to redo my website. It could use updating into a more modern-looking theme that’s easier to update when I post new book notes and articles and project updates. The site currently runs on Hugo, a static web app generator, and I use Cloudflare Pages to pull from the website’s Github repo and host it. We can stick with that basic hosting structure - I just want to update the site to look better and make it more fresh.
To do:
- Update the frontend UI to look more attractive - though I like having a minimalist look, we can definitely update the presentation. Make it look more clean and modern, while still keeping the minimalist approach.
- Adjust the blogging platform to allow easier upload and update of new pages, notes, and articles.
- Update the home page content.
- Update the contact page to be easier to use and more effective.
- Update the projects page to reflect more recent work.
- Add a page illustrating my career history and skillset, probably hosting the resume as well.
Tools to use:
- It wouldn’t be modern dev without using AI. In short: while I don’t think you should completely outsource development work to AI, and you should definitely still use your brain and critical thinking, AI tools have advantages for a developer, especially when paired with an IDE. I’m being cheap here - I’m running a local instance of Ollama that uses models for ChatGPT and Mistral for research and code prototyping.
- For my IDE, Visual Studio Code does what I need, but I’ve been able to plug Ollama into it for context-sensitive assistance.
- Again, sticking with Hugo and Cloudflare Pages. I want to find a new theme wholesale and free and modify it as little as possible for the time being. Hugo is powered by Go, but mainly posting content involves using Markdown.
The plan:
I’m jumping on the bandwagon here. I’m going to have Ollama help me prototype changes more rapidly, but also I’m going to look up new themes myself to find something that fits my style. It needs to support adding new blog entries, but I’m not too interested in the ability to comment or having posts be dated - this site is going to serve as a general long-term resource for all of my work.
To kick off new content for the blog, I’m also going to record my progress with this site overhaul. My aim is to get a new base level change set up, something launched and live with which we can tinker over time. This is a format I’d like to follow for my other future projects.
I’ll update this series as they get posted, including all of the trials and tribulations I face on such a project. I don’t expect anything difficult, but you never know!