Another site rebuild...

Background

After almost 10 years building websites, this site has been the one I’ve rebuilt the most. I’m never 100% happy with how it looks and what is on here, but today that all changes… maybe. (I’m sure this site will be rebuilt again in a couple years).

Years ago, as a soon-to-be university graduate eager for my first dev gig, I needed something eye-catching to land my first dev gig. Whether the site at the time helped in that or not, I managed to land a solid job a couple days before finishing up university. Even after securing my first web dev job, I continued redesigning, rebuilding and updating this site, with no real purpose but for something to point to when people asked what I did. It became a portfolio site for friends and family, and whoever else stumbled across it.

A couple years back I started up a separate site with a few tutorial/blog style posts. It purposely sat separate from this site as it was more informative and less “showcasey”. These posts have been migrated to this site and now live here. Their old home was fine - nothing wrong with it - but after some thinking, it didn’t really make sense having two separate sites.

The spark

The main driver to the new site design was a blog post I found late into the AM at the start of 2025, This page is under construction: A love letter to the personal website.

If you take just one thing away from this article, I want it to be this: please build your own website. A little home on the independent web.

Even though I’m relatively young and didn’t experience the GeoCities and MySpace revolution firsthand, I have still built my fair share of websites over the past 10yrs+. I can appreciate that a personal website can be more than just a portfolio site, it can be anything you want it to be.

Maybe build your own site?

I’d encourage anyone and everyone to build a personal site. Even if it’s only to appreciate the art of building a website, HTML/CSS and maybe some JavaScript. Tools like Astro (this site is currently built with) or 11ty are great places to start. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it doesn’t need RSS feeds, funky animations, light/dark mode switches. It could be a vanilla HTML page sharing a few thoughts about something you’re passionate about, hobbies or just life.

Another approach would be to use tools like Wordpress, Webflow or SquareSpace. These days it’s fairly easy to get a simple site up and running without requiring prior development or design knowledge.

Back to the spark

With this spark lit, I embarked on rebuilding my portfolio site (again) - turning it into a more personal website. This site is now full of photographs from the last 20yrs+ (not all of them, but some of my favourites), blog posts I’d previously hosted elsewhere (and a home for new ones), and a more personalised spin on the previous content hosted on this site.

Final thoughts

I’m still not 100% sure on the direction I’ll take this site, but we’ll see where it goes. For now, enjoy the content here, and keep an eye out for future updates – you can subscribe via RSS if that’s your thing.