I wanted to keep the tech stack simple and relevant to modern technologies, so as much as the primeagen praised HTMX and go, I decided to instead follow Theo's advice and go with the t3 stack, using:
I decided against implementing authentication or having a database since I didn't really think it was necessary for a portfolio website. Looking back maybe a database could have been useful, instead of using json for some data to populate project cards.
Working with Tailwind felt a bit strange at first, since up until now I had always written custom CSS, but after learning about how it helps build dynamic layouts and focuses on mobile first I saw how useful the approach was. In the past I've tried desktop first and then trying to make it work for mobile and it was almost always a mess, so I really appreciated Tailwind for this, however I don't know if I'll ever get used to how verbose the jsx can become for more complex components.
I began by looking through the sites showcased on <a href="https://create.t3.gg/en/t3-collection" target="_blank">t3.gg</a> t3.gg and found Josh's personal site to use as a starting point. I really liked the way he styled the site and it had a blog section which I wanted my site to have too. From there I made a few changes of my own.
Firstly I created a Projects section where all projects I want to showcase are housed in some cards that provide a quick summary of the project. I also added a filtering system based on blog tags but it's been pretty useless since I haven't written enough posts for it to matter. I also added a scroll to top of page button in the shape of the CN Tower on desktop and a regular overlaid arrow on mobile.
I want to refactor the filtering system to work with the projects section too since it might actually be useful for that section. Besides that I want to improve the page you're reading this on to create a better details page for the projects, maybe add in an image carousel for each project to better showcase some of the features, or maybe instead have images throughout the write up, haven't really decided. And of course, write more blog posts so that the tag filters could have actually been worth writing.