What is my personal website
The website exists here at ethanmorgan.io. Here is all of the code stored on a github repo here There are 2 main views:
- homepage ethanmorgan.io
- Goal to be friendly for both technical and non-technical audiences
- I have told senior engineers about my website before, so I want it to look good for them and →
- I have showed it to my grandma, and I want it to look cool for her rather than it being a bunch of text on a blank page.
- Goal to be friendly for both technical and non-technical audiences
- blog ethanmorgan.io/blog
- Goal to have a nice place to write and show off my work
Each are made from different templates using difference resources. I will go into how each are made below.
How does my personal website work?
Homepage
I created the homepage from the template from StyleShout Luther design, which I think is a fantastic resource. I have made a couple of modifications to the original template such as:
- making the website fade in faster rather than taking a long time
- Making the circles on the right hand side appear bolder
- change the color template to shades of orange
- change the font to “Be Vietnam Pro” which I like very much
- add a blog
Blog
I created the blog from the template generator Quartz and I am using Obsidian to write my notes. I have a small script that I used to rebuild my blog each time I update it. updateBlogScript.sh I use this script to regenerate all of the static files then move them into my website repo.
Hosting setup
Right now the domain name is registered under AWS Route53 and I have an AWS Amplify free tier website setup that will receives changes from my github repo. This github repo contains all of the html and content needed to serve the static website.
Why is it setup the way it is?
This design has been in constant iteration for a long time. Most of the changes come from my preferences. I am not great with css and html, so designing a personal website from scratch is a lot of work and time. Although it may be worth while to make and learn, practically I can just take a template I like and reformat it to be what I want.
Why not use github pages?
Github pages are a great solution, when I started making my website they did have a lot of compelling features that make it simple for users. But I wanted more control over my website where I could add some more functional features that Github could not provide. Plus why would I take the easier solution when I can reinvent the wheel for the almost same solution