Hi it's me, Ashley.
Personal Website

Over the past year, I have been developing my personal website and gone through several iterations while I experimented with different web development technologies. Here is a visual timeline of the landing page of my website. I will also include some notes about the features, the languages/technologies I used, and the general development process for each version.


(V1) Github Pages Static HTML and CSS

Languages/Technologies/Tools

Features

Development Process
Nothing special, it’s front end HTML and CSS.


(V2) Django Web Application

Languages/Technologies

Features

Development Process
I had experience with the Django framework for a now defuncted project and wanted to use a database to store my site’s content. I worked on this for about a month or so.


(V3) LAMP stack

Languages/Technologies

Features

Development Process
My intentions of creating this version was to create a website “from scratch”, using pure HTML/CSS and PHP. I came across the LAMP technology stack and started researching. Before starting, I had to learn PHP and re-learn SQL. I used XAMPP as a development environment with its built-in Apache and MariaDB. After that, I tried hosting it on my own Linux machine, but switched to Heroku. With Heroku hosting, I had to substantially change the backend design of my website including reworking file upload processes intended for my projects and blogs. Here is the dev log that I kept.


(V4) Jekyll Site

Languages/Technologies

Features

Development Process
The backend of the previous version was very insecure and inefficient. After multiple tweaks and fixes, it ended up like a static site that didn’t need a database at all. I wanted to use Jekyll’s “blog awareness” feature, clean file structure and easy workflow (at least compared to my LAMP stack), so I switched over. After a few hours of research and a full night of rewriting content, the site is up and hosting with Github Pages. Majority of the activity of my website lies in status updates, so to keep it I modified the LAMP stack to only be for status updates. As for blogging, it will be done on this site with Jekyll.


(V5, Current Version) Jekyll Revamp

Languages/Technologies

Features

Development Process
The old version was very messy; I made it without any knowledge on how static site generators like Jekyll work. So I finally read up on the documentation and followed the step-by-step tutorial. I was unhappy with how messy the previous site design was as well, so I stripped it down to the main focus of my site which is to be hub for my projects. It now only has a list of the projects on the landing page and a simple about page.