Portfolio Website Cloud CRC & BootStrap Edition
The Need
There were various needs for me to want to move my website off a hosting provider and away from WordPress. Since originally deploying my portfolio website, my knowledge and abilities in creating websites as well as working with other technologies have vastly grown.
Bellow were the main drivers for me wanting to move away from my original website deployment:
- Expanded skills
- Financial justifications
- Expanding projects portfolio
Expanded skills ⬆️
When I had originally created my portfolio & resume website, I hadn’t really worked with any web design technologies making WordPress an excellent option for getting started. Since then, I have expanded my knowledge in web development and coding technologies and have grown in my career.
Financial justifications 💵
As beneficial as I feel having an online presence is, it was hard for me to justify myself biting the bullet and paying what I was paying for hosting.
Why? The amount of traffic my website was receiving made it hard for me to justify the price I was paying for hosting. Pausing and thinking, my website is essentially a static website and there were plenty of more cost-effective options for hosting my website.
Expanding projects portfolio 💼
Fast forward to August 2024, looking for projects to add to my portfolio, I decided to take on the Cloud Resume Challenge. Having expanded my knowledge and financial justification, this was an excellent time to revamp and migrate my website.
For my experience with the Cloud Resume Challenge, I have created a separate page that focuses on that experience. This page focuses on my experience with moving my website away from WordPress.
The Project
The project first came about after identifying the three bullet points I elaborated on in the previous section.
As for the work done on this website, the project started by creating a HTML/CSS version of my resume. That resume was uploaded to Azure’s Blob storage service and a static website was deployed.
Having identified this opportunity to move the contents of my original website over, I then began the process of recreating the contents of my original portfolio website using Bootstrap and my own HTML/CSS code. My goal was to achieve a look similar to my original website and I would say, I met that goal. 👌
Moving away from WordPress and coding my website myself allowed me to add my own touches and style the website more to what I wanted. Additionally, I would say I made improvements in styling including the following improvements.
- Updated home page
- More cohesive choices in fonts and styling
- Revision of text on pages
- Resume page made using HTML/CSS instead of uploading it as an image
- Addition of additional projects and links
At this point, all the content and assets from my original website have been moved over and enhanced. Additional projects and content have even been added and I am satisfied with the look and feel of this website.
I do have ideas for how to expand on and enhance this website, however I will save that for the Moving Forward Section! 😊
Challenges and Thoughts
Overall, I wouldn’t say there were many challenges in moving the content from my v1.0 website over to this new iteration of my portfolio website. Formatting the HTML was easy and styling the CSS on the website was trial and error with what I found appealing.
This iteration of my portfolio website is tied to the work needed to complete the Cloud Resume Challenge so any challenges encountered, will have been tied to that experience.
This iteration of my website was a fun project to undertake. It was a little bittersweet moving on from my original website, however, it was a need, and this experience provided me with an opportunity to showcase the skills I have gained. Additionally, moving my content over provided me with an opportunity to revise and correct errors I may have missed when creating my initial website.
Forward & Improvement Ideas ⏩
Having moved everything over to this iteration of my website, I plan on adding content as the opportunities arise.
Keeping my resume updated is easier on this website since my old website used a jpeg version of my resume that required a bit of work to get added. Now, I can simply edit the HTML on the page to make any modifications.
In its current iteration, this website is a static website which more than satisfies my needs! However, one improvement I can envision for the future is changing this website to a web app and taking advantage of templating. This would make adding additional pages, especially when making changes to the navbar, a more streamlined process.
Overall, I am happy with the work on this website and plan to keep improving on it!