I’ve always wanted to create a website to showcase my projects. Nowadays, building and deploying a website is easier and more affordable than ever, so I decided to give it a try and create this simple blog. Building a website today is straightforward: there are many WYSIWYG platforms that allow you to create pages without any coding knowledge. However, creating a website from scratch with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript gives you complete control over the process.

HUGO, GitHub, and Netlify

Hugo is touted as “the world’s fastest framework for building websites.” It is written in Go and is an open-source static site generator. While there are many themes available, I wanted to create something personal, starting almost from scratch. The theme of this website is based on Etch by Lukas Joswiak, with a few modifications (emblacarousel, custom homepage, etc.) The source code of the website (Hugo theme, .md files, etc.) is hosted on GitHub in a private repository. To make it accessible online, I needed to deploy it. I’m using Netlify because it is easy to set up and offers a convenient Continuous Deployment feature. I also set up the DNS record to point andfar.me to the Netlify content delivery network. Netlify provides an SSL certificate through Let’s Encrypt for free. Although I’m a novice in web development, I was able to deploy a website in a few hours, thanks to open-source software and services like Netlify. I encourage everyone to do the same. Having a personal space on the internet is very useful, and you can learn a lot in the process. Plus, it’s free!