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My Portfolio is Live: Here’s What I Learned

My Portfolio is Live: Here’s What I Learned

February 26, 2025

After many weeks of hard work, I’m excited to finally share my developer portfolio with the world! My goal was to create a clean, functional, and professional site that not only highlights my skills and projects but also offers a simple, user-friendly experience. In this post, I’ll walk you through the main features of the site and share a few key lessons I learned along the way.

Key Features

1. Minimalistic UI with Shadcn UI Library

I used Shadcn UI to build clean, minimal UI components that keep the design simple and to the point, without distracting from the content.

2. Mobile-friendly UI and Theme Toggle

The website is responsive and you can easily switch between light mode and dark mode, making the site comfortable to view in any environment, especially mobile.

3. Straight-to-the-Point Homepage

The homepage is designed to be no-nonsense—my resume, projects, and contact links are all there upfront, so visitors get the essentials right away.

4. Blog (I'll work on being more consistent...)

I’ve also added a blog, where I’ll occasionally share my thoughts and updates as I work on new projects or features.

5. Contact Page with Email Integration

The Contact page lets visitors send me a message directly, which I receive as an email for easy communication.

The Hidden Costs of a Portfolio

Maybe I'm dumb but building the portfolio wasn’t entirely free:

  • Domain: $20/year for the custom domain.
  • Free-ish Tool: Services like Vercel (for hosting) are free for now, but may incur costs if my usage increases.

Future Plans and Enhancements

  • Adding AI Chat Bot: I plan to eventually add an AI chat bot on the home page in order for people to get information about me from the bot. I would need to pay for an OpenAI API and implement a database, such as AstraDB for storing vector data.
  • Managing Blog Posts: Right now, blog posts are part of the project source, which triggers a rebuild on every commit. In the future, I may switch to a proper CMS or just use Obsidian to manage blog content more efficiently.

Thank you for checking out my portfolio! I’m excited to keep improving it and learning from the process. Feel free to explore and reach out if you have any questions.

— Ryan