JohnSolly.dev, a personal portfolio website

Purpose and Objective

Initially, my professional portfolio was nested within blogthedata.com, a personal blog I have maintained for several years. Having my portfolio/resume share the same domain as my blog always felt awkward.

The inception of JohnSolly.dev was driven by my desire to create a dedicated space for my professional portfolio, resume, and consulting services. I also sought an excuse to experiment with Astro.js, a technology that blends static site generation with client-side ‘interactive islands.‘

Highlights

JohnSolly.dev has some exciting features. I connected it to Stripe and Cal.com so anyone can pay for and book me for consulting services. You’ll also notice that my resume page is just a single markdown file with some added CSS.

Tech Stack

I had heard good things about Astro.js for crafting static sites with dynamic, interactive ‘islands.’ Its unique approach to blending static site generation with client-side interactivity quickly won me over. It feels like Astro is a backend framework without all the overhead.

I also used this site to learn more about Amazon’s offerings, mainly as I work towards my AWS Solutions Architect certification. I initially deployed to AWS Amplify but have since migrated to S3, Cloudfront, and Route 53. I also used AWS Certificate Manager to manage my SSL certificate.

Overcoming Obstacles

Migrating the portfolio content from my blog to this site was relatively straightforward, yet the project was not without its hurdles. Adapting Django’s server-side templates to Astro.js’s methodology required intelligent thought to preserve functionality while doing things the ‘Astro way.’ I came across an interesting quirk where the testimonial carousel indicators went out of sync with the currently selected option. .astro files contain NO client-side state, so I needed to move some of the logic that was in the template to the client-side JavaScript.

Looking Ahead

Now that I’ve deployed to S3 and Cloudfront with Route 53 routing and DNS, I’d like to make the deployment more repeatable with Cloudformation and/or Terraform.