Personal Website
Background
Originally, my first iteration of the website was pure HTML/CSS (Github); a complete beginner. I’ve always wanted a personal website where I can share my thoughts and accomplishments, but I quickly found that finicking with media queries in CSS was not my forte. At times CSS could be frustrating when I have an idealistic vision of my work but often lost on how to accomplish it. Whenever, I needed to add a update or add a page, I had to constantly refresh my memory what my CSS elements where and the layout of my pages. Basically it was a hassle.
I just wanted a simple easy website that I can quickly write my thoughts without too much worry about the finicky presentational details. At first, I wanted to design my website with React and hosting my blog in some backend which can serve the content of the pages. That solves my issue with the finicky presentation because of React’s components and with the many different packages for CSS components it seemed like my best bet. But was it?
It was unnecessarily complicated for a static site that I wanted.
Jekyll
While working as a Software Developer Officer for Upsilon Pi Epsilon, I noticed that their website is generated using Jekyll. Upon looking into it more, it seems like the go-to static site generator for blog-style websites, perfect for my scenario. What was the selling point was the ability to write pages in markdown, a skill that’s easily picked up and removes the need remembering HTML classes and CSS elements. Jekyll would auto convert my markdown into html pages, win-win.
I found it best to use Tale which was designed by Chester Ho. It suited my style seamlessly with a minimalistic design presenting the blog and only using a grayscale tone. I did not want a colorful website as I felt it removes the attention away from reading my thoughts - just an elegant simple design was suitable. Very easy and clear to setup and start writing content for the world!
Deployment
My personal website was deployed onto github pages specifically using the wallace-lim.github.io repository. Github generously provided each user a free site hosting page.