I created my website to provide more in-depth information about me and my projects than can fit onto a resume. Along the way, I learned a lot about web development and how to use various tools.
Beginning
The first iteration of my site was completely handwritten HTML and CSS. Although some people like the minimalism of these sorts of sites and made them work really well (shoutout to Eli), it wasn't for me. The site was ugly and completely broken on mobile devices.
Bootstrap
I started using Bootstrap for its nice styles that are designed to work on mobile devices. Bootstrap gave the website the general "look" that it still has today. It also It also enabled some neat features, like a collapsible navbar. I still use Bootstrap today to do nearly all of the styling.
Jekyll
As the number of pages on my site grew, I was becoming increasingly frustrated when I needed to make small changes, like fixing a link in the navbar. I'd have to manually go and correct the link on each page the navbar appeared. I was wasting too much time on redundant code and was too prone to make mistakes. To remedy this, I use Jekyll to generate the site for me. Jekyll's template and include features allow me to only have the information that is unique to each page in a file. Now when updating the navbar, I only need to change the navbar file, and I'll see the same change on every page that includes the navbar.
Deployment
Originally, I bought my domain through Google Domains for $12/yr. I could statically host my site on GitHub Pages, which works well with Jekyll. However, when Google announced in June 2023 it was selling Domains to Squarespace, I decided to investigate using Azure. Having my domain in Azure also made it easy for me to give third-level domains to my projects, like AzurePhotos at photos.wmboyles.net. I wasn't able to transfer ownership of my domain from Google to Azure, so wmboyles.com became wmboyles.net. The domain itself still costs $12/yr, but there are also about $0.50/month from charges associated with the DNS zone. Since I have some free monthly Azure credits from work, migrating saved me money out of pocket.
Although you are already viewing the website, all the code is available on GitHub.