Building a Portfolio
This portfolio is built with Next.js ↗ (opens in a new tab) and a library called Nextra ↗ (opens in a new tab). It allows you to write Markdown and focus on the content of your portfolio. This includes:
- Automatically configured to handle Markdown/MDX
- Generates an RSS feed based on your posts
- A beautiful theme included out of the box
- Easily categorize posts with tags
- Fast, optimized web font loading
This detail, along with the initial template for this portfolio, is provided by Vercel ↗ (opens in a new tab).
Vercel
Vercel's frontend cloud gives developers the frameworks, workflows, and infrastructure to build a faster, more personalized Web.
So far, I've been exceedingly impressed by Vercel's functionality and ease of use. Getting this portfolio initally published took a matter of minutes. Since then, It's also proven to be very simple to maintain. A few things I've been impressed with:
Cost
Vercel's pricing information ↗ (opens in a new tab)
I'm currently using Vercel's Hobby plan, which is their free offering. As an individual only needing to host and maintain a lightweight portfolio, I have been very happy with the extensive functionality they offer.
I don't expect to exceed the limits ↗ (opens in a new tab) of the $0 Hobby plan any time soon.
CI/CD Pipleines
While I've only integrated my Vercel project with a GitHub repository, using Git with Vercel seems very simple across any of their Supported Git Providers ↗ (opens in a new tab).
By linking to a Git repository - in this case, a GitHub repository of mine - Vercel automatically set up an automated CI/CD pipeline for me.
- Every branch commit I make automatically creates an incremental deployment to a Preview/Dev environment so that I can preview my changes in a prod-like environment first.
- Every branch push and merge to my production branch -
main- automatically deploys to Production.
On the $0 Hobby plan, I am limited to 45 minutes of build time per deployment. However, my longest build at the time of writing this was 27 seconds.
Obviously - as the complexity and content of this portfolio increases - I should expect build times to increase as well, but I doubt I will ever meet the 45 minute limit.
A variety of other resource limits also exist for the Hobby plan, but they are all sufficiently high or large enough that I don't expect this to be an issue any time soon - if ever.
Domains
I already had a few parked domains prior to setting up this portfolio on Vercel. Vercel's project settings made it very easy to update my domain name provider's DNS Records with the appropriate information and then configure and manage these domains (including redirects) in Vercel.
As my time using Vercel, Next.js, and Nextra continues, I will likely come back and update this post with other items I've enjoyed or appreciated.