Gatsby Website Development

2021-11-11

This website you are visiting to see this post. It was a proof to myself to show that I could learn something complex in a new type of field, and learn it on my own.

After leaving my mechanical engineering job, I took the time to reflect on my current state. I didn't know what I wanted to do next, but I knew I wanted to explore and indulge in new spaces and experiences.

I decided to create a personal website from scratch. I've never coded before, beyond basic engineering calculation methods. I always thought that I could do it, but never tried.

Using a website service or template was out of the question; I wanted to really learn how to do it (the hard way). I asked a friend what I could do to start and he mentioned GatsbyJS as an option for barebones developer work. From there I jumped into the deep end.

To learn something completely new, complex, and on my own was a challenge I hadn't had in a long time. During the developing experience, the complete progress-stopping roadblocks were constant and major. It tested my perserverence and willpower to push through every challenge. Even to the point of making a mistake breaking the entire site and having to start all over after a week of work.

The process reaffirmed and improved confidence in my ability to learn how to learn.

Problem:

Learn how to and build a website for a personal portfolio of work, with no starting knowledge of web development coding.

Solution:

For each roadblock, learn enough knowledge to be able to ask the right questions.

Lessons Learned:

Start building sooner than later, the real learning starts then.
Learn to use version control (git), or else learn it the hard way when everything breaks beyond repair
Focus more on what needs to be learned now, instead of falling down a rabbit hole and trying to learn everything
Build piece by piece, and make sure to really understand how each piece is working
Most of the time, the answer to your question is out there, but you still need to figure out how the underlying logic will work for your context

Technologies

GatsbyJS
ReactJS
HTML
CSS
Markdown
Headless CMS (Contentful)
Hosting (Netlify)
Git/Github
VScode
Panelbear Web Analytics

Update Log:

11/2021 v1.0 | Basic features 12/2021 v1.1 | Added Privacy focused web analytics