Old website 2016

Theme: Create a simple portfolio website
Project duration: ~1 weekend of coding
Team size: 1
My task: Everything (solo project)

NOTE: This post is about my old website, which was then replaced by Jekyll.

This website is made with Django-framework and bootstrap. It is technically and visually outdated/unfinished, but I guess it still serves its purpose.

This website was a one week project with the purpose of quickly making a website for displaying my portfolio.

Platform

This portfolio website is made with the Python web framework Django. It is hosted on a virtual machine from DigitalOcean cloud-service. The virtual machine is running Gunicorn and Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04.

To be honest, Django is overkill for this kind of a website. I could have just created a few static HTML-files and host them on a ready-made webserver. But this is not what I want. I chose Django, because I really enjoy using it. Creating the backend is so fast and it gives me the freedom to create anything I want. On the side I wanted to test my Unix skills by managing my own server, not to mention trying out the hugely hyped cloud-services.

Background

I got familiar with Django on a ‘Game Store’ school project. The project idea was to create a website, where developers can upload games while users can buy and play those games. I’m really new to web (software) development and this school project was my website ever. I might make this school project public along with the git-repository, after it is graded on Spring 2016.

Details

Currently this website only serves my project descriptions, which are actually on a SQL-database. They are dynamically fetched upon request with the power of Django. Again, I could make them separate static HTML files, but I want to keep my website dynamic and flexible. For posting new projects I’m currently using the WYSIWYG editor Summernote. This is the only external app for Django, everything else is build from scratch. Summernote caught my eye with very easy Django integration, along with image uploading. However it is really lacking on the editing capabilities, such as moving images around. Everything else is written in raw HTML, Python and JavaScript in Atom. For the site design I’m using Bootstrap.

My primary focus is to create a simplish website for showing what I do. Later on, as I get new interesting Web software ideas, I will be implementing them here. I might even add a blogging feature to these projects. This way I could keep the project descriptions brief, while still having the ability to constantly write up my thoughts and progress.

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