TLDR;
- A digital identity is critical in this day and age, but it is often too easy to lose control of it.
- Instead, we should take control of our own digital narrative by designing and customising a personal website.
- I explain how I did so.
Conception
If what I do is common - I tend to read the latest few posts and first post when visiting a new blog. So I hope dear reader, to make this count.
It took the better part of one and a half-ish days over the long weekend to get this up and running.
I had been mulling for a long time to built my own website.
The world is relentlessly digitising.
It is almost impossible to thrive in the modern world without having our very essence of being - identity, knowledge, and more - digitised in some way . People upload themselves to the omnipotent cloud through a great many channels, giving birth to a digital twin. For better or worse, this twin represents us across all aspects of life; Our careers, relationships, hobbies to name a few.
I believe that there is much more to an individual than curated pictures, comments and memes. This digital twin however, is a hollow shell. Lacking the heart and warmth of ourselves.
So how does one fill this shell?
In an attempt to do so, I endeavoured to build my own website. To build a viewing window into my own mind and on my terms. A digital footprint with WJ’s stamp of approval.
Fairly early into the process, I preconceived this project to be a highly personalised one - a digital trail that ought be customisable and built by my own hands. As a result, I steered away from prebuilt options like Wordpress or Wix - though as a beginner, it was impossible to run away from prebuilt templates, ~~as seen here ~~ (update: adapted to make my own Hugo template).
In the longer run, I intend to use this site to keep track of developments in my thinking, a creative outlet and a repository of passions. I envision and hope that his would remain active for many years to come. It would be an interesting time capsule to revisit ideas new and old.
How this was built
From a very scrappy start (i.e. zero knowledge), there were a few main guides i followed below. Along the way, I recgonised that if my intent is to blog (with absolutely zero PHP/ backend knowledge), something more practical than a pure HTML/CSS site was needed. After finding out that Static Site Generators (SSGs) could be fit for my purpose, I chose Hugo over Jekyll … I just read something somewhere. Got to stay with the trends I suppose.
- A bootstrap 4 tutorial, which piqued my interest in HTML/CSS again, since half-completing a course last Christmas.
- how to build a website on Hugo, very clear and good guide - would certainly recommend it, though I faced issues in deploying in the last step.
- how to create an SSH key in a desperate attempt to fix a roadblock i faced when doing 2. I had no idea what was going on.
- how to deploy with netlify, since i was stuck on some git issues for gitpages which i couldn’t wrap my amateur head around. Found this channel’s content to be pretty good.
Other guides i didn’t quite get through.
Things I picked up along the way…
- HTML/CSS
- Bootstrap 4 which was useful refresher, but not critical for this approach. Will nonetheless come in handy later when i try to customise things;
- Using github and visual studio code;
- Creating an SSH Key for github (again, unnecessary);
- Jumping around command prompt, powershell, and git … and the innumerable errors when loading adding submodules (which still didn’t work);
- Deploying the site (and buying a domain). This was by far the most confusing part for me; and
- Writing in Markdown (as I am doing right now).
Features to Add
Having ideated on some of these elements for a while, perhaps I can finally list some of these down here:
Sections
- CV/ Resume (see lifestack project - skill and life timeline mapping)
- Network analysis (email network?)
- Interests - Investments (added in blog format)
- Interests - Cooking (added in blog format)
- Interests - Travel (map of where i’ve been + a illustrative photo?)
- Add goodreads/ other online profiles (updated 10 may)
- Add section on things i subscribe to/ like to read
- SEO - so that this site appears when my name is say googled
- Customising the layout template in Hugo (probably quite technical - updated 10 May)
- Integrating other static pages (updated: Resume and About page are static)
Updated 3 October