About This Project
Well, it's this site... the one you're on right now. It's basically me in code form. I built it to show off what I know, how I think, and how I build. It’s not a startup, it’s not for a client... it’s just a space where I can try things, break them, fix them, and see how far I can push my skills without overthinking it.
I’ve changed frameworks twice, redesigned the UI more times than I can count, and restyled everything four times on this framework alone. Right now, we’re on version 2.4, and honestly, that number feels modest considering the chaos that’s gone into this.
Everything has been iterative. I shipped early, built mobile-first, and worked in rough sprints. I used to have a separate backend, but I eventually dropped it. It just wasn’t worth the overhead for what I was doing.
It’s been all solo work... no team, no Figma collabs... just me doing dev, design (kind of), SEO, testing, and fighting with Google. Speaking of... SEO has been hell. Google randomly decided to index the wrong page and threw some canonical errors that made zero sense. I fixed everything I could on my end, but the errors kept popping up. Hopefully, once I get a proper domain, that'll help clear things up. Until then, I’ll just keep building.
Design is something I love, but I haven’t really flexed that muscle in a while. For this site, I didn’t actually design anything at first... I just built based on my mood. Only recently did I start wireframing so I could figure out where to add animations or CTA buttons. It’s been messy, but also kind of freeing. I'm definitely tweaking... positively... I think?
One mindset shift I can for sure say I’ve had is realizing that over-optimization is kind of rubbish. I used to obsess over perfecting things before shipping. Now I care way more about getting something functional first... and then cleaning it up later. That’s probably been the biggest change compared to other projects like Flave. I still catch myself overengineering sometimes, but I’m getting better at knowing when to stop.
If I could do one thing differently, I’d plan more. I dove in way too fast. A lot of things took longer than they needed to because I didn’t sit down and map out what I actually needed. But honestly, that’s how I learn... trial and error, doing it wrong the first time, and figuring it out along the way.
All in all, this site is turning into one of the few personal projects I actually want to maintain long-term. There’s still a ton I want to add... a blog, a comment system, galleries, collaborator shoutouts, maybe even some weird experiments just for fun. But even now, unfinished as it is, it already reflects how much I’ve grown. And that’s kind of the whole point.