Building My Personal Website

A couple of days ago, I decided to try my hand at building my own personal website. Years ago, I remember seeing developers on YouTube talk about how they built their own websites for their “portfolio”. I always thought that looked like fun, but I never made one because I didn’t think it was a worthwhile investment.

Why did I change my mind? Well, now that I’m job hunting, I thought it would be a good idea to create my own digital calling card. The goal is to create a single link that I can give out anytime, anywhere. This website holds all my professional information with a little personal flair mixed in. After all, if a recruiter wanted to hire a robot, generative AI is always looking for work. However, I have character, creativity, and problem-solving skills that AI hasn’t quite managed to copy yet.

So, how did I create this website? I cheated! If you scroll to the bottom of this article, you’ll notice a footer that discloses my secret. I directly copied a GitHub repository called “al-folio” and made a couple stylistic changes to personalize the pages. This website is currently hosted on GitHub Pages with a custom domain. You can actually check out all the secret files making up this website by finding my GitHub account and navigating to this website’s public repository. Sometimes a quick solution is better than an original one!

I decided that there are three major components my website needs. First, I wanted to maintain a digital copy of my CV/resume so that a recruiter could easily find it as I start sharing this website with people. Second, it would be nice to have a page dedicated to all the cool projects I’ve worked on. I thought it would be nice to have someplace to look back on and see how much progress I’ve made as I continue into my professional career. Finally, this blog. While I am planning on being a software engineer by trade, writing and communication are invaluable life skills. By maintaining a blog that I will post on occasionally, I’ll help myself strengthen these skills.

Since you’re already here, feel free to browse this website and see first-hand the implementations you just read about!