I listen to SyntaxFM, a great podcast about frontend development. A specific episode about resumes and online presence caught my attention. Instead of just having a simple resume, I decided I wanted to showcase my skills, and tell people a bit more about me than can fit on one sheet of paper.
I tried to timebox the creation of the first-draft of this website. I created a backlog for myself in Notion to track and prioritize my goals. My aim was a simple design that still looks polished.
I chose NextJS for its ease of use and many built-in features. I chose Netlify because it offers integration with Github so that your site deploys every time you push code. TailwindCSS came built-in in NextJS and I wanted an excuse to play around with it. (My takeaway: Tailwind is a nice way to get up and running, but I don't love long class lists and instead am still partial to SASS.)
Optimization, speed, responsive design, and accessibility are all important as well. To achieve these goals, I used Google's Lighthouse to analyze performance, axe DevTools by Deque to pinpoint accessibility issues, and @next/bundle-analyzer to analyze my bundle size.
As every frontend dev can attest, there is always a long list of TODOs that grows and grows. I decided to list my ideas here and check them off as I get time to implement them.