At the start of the summer break, I sat there wondering what a good summer project could be. A game engine would be fun, but I had just spent the last few months developing one and needed a break. Several other ideas for apps useful to me came to mind, but then it occurred that having a website to demo all my current and future projects would be highly beneficial.

Having no idea about what to use to generate my website or even host it, I reached out to a friend who mentioned HUGO and suggested finding somewhere that will host a static website. From there, my Google journey began, and I settled with HUGO and hosting through Microsoft’s Azure as I had free hosting thanks to the GitHub student developer pack.

Grabbing a free .tech domain from the GitHub student pack, I began hosting my first page through Azure. The process was messy and the UI unintuitive, finding the static web hosting page tucked away under a mountain of sub-menus. Realising I needed an SSL certificate, I switched to Cloudflare as my DNS since they offered free SSL certificates.

But after all that mess around, I began learning some simple HTML/CSS/JS as well as the flow of HUGO. The design process was great, and I found developing a front-end solution enjoyable. During development, I realised that providing a message form would be ideal and quickly discovered that most solutions required heavy maintenance for security reasons or cost money if I went with a third-party solution. And this is where Netlify comes in!

Netlify offered a form with up to 100 free messages, which is more than I’ll ever need unless I become highly sort after in the future. 😄
Switching to Netlify was easy, and the UI was much easier than Azure. I also changed from Cloudflare to use Netlify’s DNS. Netlify also offers plugins and asset optimisation such as Bundling and minifying CSS & JS as well as caching old builds to save build minutes when new features are pushed.

For vulnerability assessment, I use SNYK to monitor my website, which found a few old JS libraries with vulnerabilities. It scans my GitHub repo monthly and reports any issues it may encounter, allowing me to stay on top of new vulnerabilities as they occur. I also use a Content-Security-Policy (CSP) to ensure only authorised content loads on the website.

The website’s design itself is minimal and basic, but for my first attempt at a website, I am quite happy with it. This website is a platform for me to demonstrate what I can do and who I am, and because of that, I plan to keep developing it long into the future.

Explore the source code here: Website Source Code