Website Redesign and Rebuild

I've redesigned my website and rebuilt it from scratch!

Years ago, when I first made my website, I just wanted to get something up and running to have a place for my photography to live. I grabbed WordPress, applied a theme, and that was it. I ended up neglecting my website just as fast as I was able to create it.

It never felt quite right to work in the WordPress dashboard. Also, the look of my website was limited by what the theme I had chosen was able to provide.

As my skills as a front end developer and fondness for design have grown, I decided to take this opportunity to start from scratch and apply what I have learned.

My process.

Designs.

I did all of my design work in Figma. I chose typography scales, color palettes (although I have yet to apply this and have stuck with a monochromatic look), responsive layout options for mobile and web, and logo options. In the future, I'll further expand on the design system that I've started. For now, this gives me the minimum I needed for the first iteration of my rebuild.

Development.

The technology stack I chose includes Gatsby for static site generation, React for building front end components, Styled Components for styling, and Prismic for content management. The static site generation offers great performance, and the limitations that I was facing from using a theme are gone now that I can build and style my components. I wanted to try a headless CMS for content management, but I'm still considering using markdown for my content and have it live in my codebase.

Hosting.

Hosting cost was a huge factor in my decision to rebuild my website. With Netlify, that cost goes down to zero while I stay within the free tier. Plus, continuous deployments from a GitHub repository is so simple.

What's next?

I'm happy with the new life that I was able to give to my website. It's much easier to manage my content, and the experience of my website is only limited by what I can imagine and build. This is only the first release of my new website, and I now have a solid foundation to continue building on.

The next steps for my website will be to include more animations (I've been looking into Framer Motion), decide between staying with a headless CMS or managing content in markdown, and improve the experience of viewing the photography page.