🔎 Project’s Purpose
After maintaining a Wix-based site for several years, I decided to rebuild my personal portfolio from scratch, not only to cut hosting costs, but also to enhance the design and challenge myself technically. My original site cost over $200/year to host online. However, I realized I could host a fully customized, static portfolio for free using Hugo and GitHub Pages, so I dove in.
⚙️ Tools and Tech
I built the site locally in VS Code, handled version control with Git and GitHub, and used Markdown and HTML to structure content across pages and blog posts. I initially deployed with Netlify but encountered issues with image rendering and static asset handling. Switching to Vercel drastically improved the CI/CD experience, allowing smooth, auto-deployed updates with every Git push.
🛜 Domain Setup & Deployment
To finalize everything, I reconfigured my domain’s DNS settings to properly route traffic and ensured SSL was active for secure access. This step completed the transition from Wix to a fully self-managed web presence.
🧠 Acquired Skills
This project sharpened my technical foundation and gave me hands-on experience with tools and workflows commonly used in modern web development. Key skills acquired include:
- Version Control & GitHub Workflows
- Branch management
- Pull/push commands
- CI-integrated commits
- Static Site Generation (Hugo)
- Content structuring
- Templating
- Performance-focused builds
- CI/CD Deployment Pipelines
- Automated deployment via Vercel tied to GitHub pushes
- DNS & Domain Management
- Routing traffic
- Configuring records
- Enabling HTTPS
- Markdown & Content Modeling
- Semantic content writing with scalable organization