Another iteration of my website

Another iteration of my website

For over a decade now, I have had an interest in building my own website for various reasons. Most recently, I built my website using a framework called Publish by John Sundell, and while it was a fun project to build this website using Publish, I found that the maintenance of the website to be a hassle, especially since I was unsuccessful in creating a custom theme for the website. After realizing the difficulty of implementing a custom theme with a prebuilt website template (from HTML5Up), I decided to switch how the website would be built, and Ghost became the optimal solution for that.

As building a website can be a complex process, I will spare the details of how this website came to be, but it is an important milestone to have this new website, as I have gone through several iterations of building my personal website with different frameworks, notably:

  • iWeb (Apple Inc.) and Dropbox (2011-2013)
  • WordPress (2013-2020)
  • Publish by John Sundell (2020-2023)
  • Ghost (2023-present)

This progression is interesting to note because it highlights how the complexity of the website has changed over time with each framework. Each framework became increasingly complex until now, going from a very simple HTML site generator with iWeb to a database-driven system like WordPress. The issue with WordPress is that it has a lot of overhead, so it can be quite resource-intensive for even the simplest of websites. Desiring a simpler website, Publish became a great alternative, as it generated a static website that helped me join the 512KB Club and drastically lower my website's load time. However, as mentioned earlier, the maintenance of Publish is a lot of work, especially since it is a domain-specific language that had little use outside of building that website. Therefore, Ghost became the next best alternative, as it is fairly lightweight and easy to maintain.

It is my goal to use this new iteration of my website as a way to both talk about what I am passionate about, especially how the Lord is working in my life, and to reduce my dependence on social media platforms. Through this new method, I hope to help people orient their lives toward having more authentic interactions, lessening their own dependence on social media, and open the door to discussions about faith.

I look forward to seeing what comes from this next iteration of my website!