Building My First Personal Website: A Backend Engineer's Journey

Hello and welcome! I'm Jen, a backend software engineer based in Seattle. After five years in the corporate world, I'm finally taking the plunge and building my own personal website for fun. It's a journey into the frontend world, something I have very little experience with. Let's see how it goes!

The MVP: Keeping it Simple

My goal is to create a simple website, a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Initially, I just want something with my name, a few links, and an 'About Me' page. I'll add more features and fancy animations later, but for now, simplicity is key.

Choosing a Hosting Platform: GitHub Pages

Following a friend's suggestion, I'm starting with GitHub Pages. It's a simple way to host my website, and I can always move to a domain registry later if I want more control.

Battling Configuration Issues and Embracing ChatGPT

Setting up the development environment proved to be a bit of a challenge. Installing necessary tools led to configuration issues, but luckily, ChatGPT came to the rescue! Instead of endless scrolling through Stack Overflow, I could quickly get solutions to my errors by simply inputting them into ChatGPT. It's like having a conversation with another developer, and the latency is incredibly low.

ChatGPT has become an invaluable tool. I can ask it literally anything, and it provides helpful responses almost instantly. It's made the development process much faster and more efficient.

Progress Update: Basic HTML and CSS with Bootstrap

I've made some progress! I'm using Jle to preview changes on a local server. I'm now setting up my basic HTML file and planning to work on the styling later. For styling, I'm using CSS Bootstrap, which is supposed to be beginnerfriendly. The entire site will be built with HTML and CSS, no JavaScript for now.

Adding Content and Social Media Links

I'm planning to add pictures and make the contact button functional. I also want to include social media icons at the bottom of the page, linking to my Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube accounts. Chat GPT has been a huge help in figuring out how to do this. The subscription version is worth it!

Completed Initial Setup and Deployed!

I've finished the initial basic website setup and committed the changes! The link is in the description below if you want to check it out. I'm open to suggestions for improvements. I'd eventually like to make it more dynamic, but for now, it's a simple website setup.

Backend Skills are Transferable!

Doing frontend work felt strange initially because there are so many things I don't understand. However, my backend engineering skills have been surprisingly transferable. If you're a backend engineer interested in frontend development, don't let it scare you! It's simpler than you think.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed coding for myself and doing something for my personal development. I hope to do more of these side projects in the future. Let me know in the comments if you have any ideas for my next coding project!

Oh, and I almost forgot! My cat, Towel, didn't make an appearance in this video, so here he is!