How Was This Site Made?

The site was constructed using SvelteKit (originally Node & Express.js) with Cloudflare Pages for hosting (previously NameCheap). I switched frameworks midway through development, primarily because SvelteKit’s reusable component architecture eliminated significant routing and component code that would otherwise require manual routing.

Inspiration

The colour scheme draws from the gruvbox theme for vim, which I find visually comfortable and use across my entire development environment, including terminal applications. For typography, the site implements Fira Code, chosen for its aesthetic appeal and ligature support — features like ->, <--->, !=, <=, >=, ===, and =====> are a nice touch.

Hosting

The original hosting solution was a VPS through NameCheap, which functioned adequately with Node and Express.js. When attempting to migrate to SvelteKit, the VPS’s outdated npm and Node versions (4+ versions behind current releases) made execution impossible. This prompted a search for cost-effective alternatives, leading to discovery of GitHub Pages and Cloudflare Pages — both offering free hosting.

Cloudflare Pages proved especially appealing due to straightforward setup, automatic deployment from Git repositories, and seamless custom domain integration. I appreciate traditional server management’s educational value and control, though hardware and electricity costs make self-hosting impractical.

Programming the Website

Development began with Node.js and Express.js, leveraging previous experience building A-level projects with these technologies. The switch to SvelteKit brought component-based architecture which made building and maintaining the site significantly easier.

However, the update that bought runes to svelte made me switch to an even simpler framework called hugo - this is nice because hugo is MUCH simpler for smaller sites like mine, and offers a way to use one of the best formats ever (markdown). This site is still a work-in-progress but hugo has made a big difference in the speed I can write and upload to the website and not have to rely on other third party extensions as hugo was made to support .md extensions.