The Fastest way to build your personal website and like it!

Intro

You need a website. You know you do. A website doesn't just serve as your portfolio, but it's your own little corner on the internet. A place where you share ideas and document your journey. It's not only beneficial for others, but it's also useful for you too!

But just like doctors tend to be the worst patients, developers are the worst clients.

As devs, we know what's possible on the web (which is basically everything!). So we get into choice overload and never get to building anything.

Since choice overload is a real problem for us, let's Simplify!. Let's reduce our choices just enough to get stuff done. Introducing Hashnode!

This blog is about How I built my personal website using hashnode

Why Hashnode

I was in the same place for a long time, but then I discovered Hashnode (this is the platform you're reading this blog on). That led to kaviisuri.com. Let's see why I chose hashnode:

Hashnode allows enough personalisation without giving a choice overload.
Hashnode gives a good starting point to get started, so you don't start from a blank page.
You own your content! You can even back it up to a GitHub repo if you want.
You own the traffic! You can have your own domain.
And a lot more features!

I know what you're thinking.

But Isn't Hashnode a Blogging Platform?

Yes. It is. And that's what makes it excellent. Look. An empty website just looks bad. And having a blog is the best thing you can do for improving your skills in communication, tech and other areas. You don't need to go full content creator, just write about your experiences and you'll thank yourself later.

And yes, hashnode is truly a blogging platform, but it's a lot more!

Getting Started

Enough talk! Let's build something! You can just go to hashnode.com and create an account like you normally would.

Hashnode provides you a URL of the form {username}.hashnode.dev, but you can setup your own domain too!

More than Blogging

You of course want other pages on your website. It's a personal website, not just a blog, is it? That's where Hashnode Custom Pages come in.

Hashnode allows you to create custom pages with markdown and html that let you create whatever you want! Let's see an example

My website has an about me page. It has a section about me (duh!) and my work experience (I may switch this to a separate page in the future, share your thoughts in the comments!).

To create a page, open your hashnode blog dashboard and go to pages.
Click on create new page, and start editing.
Write about your self in markdown.
Adding Cards can be as simple as adding the following in markdown:

---
> #### SDE Intern @ Procol
> `09/2021 - Present`
>
> Procol is Next generation digital procurement software and they aim to make businesses in India easier. 
> I worked on developing both products and platform tools to make lives of clients and fellow developers easier and boost productivity.
---

This looks like this: Not bad for 30 seconds of work right?

Making it your own with Custom CSS`!

Hashnode lets you write Custom CSS!

Go to the appearance tab.
Scroll down to Custom CSS Section and turn it on!
Click on edit custom stylesheet and write custom CSS for anything you want!

NOTE: Don't forget to click Update after you make any changes in settings

If you want to do a custom header for the website like me, you can go to uigradients.io and get a gradient from there.

Next, open the stylesheet and add In all the sheets (home, articles and pages).

Custom Widgets

Although I haven't used it yet, Hashnode also lets you create custom elements or widgets. You can use this to add reusable embeds in your articles or pages.

Inspiration

My website doesn't use hashnode to its full potential yet! There's a lot more that's possible. You can look for inspiration from the following people:

Plus its just CSS, you can go crazy with it!

Conclusion

Look, I know it's not all the crazy animations or the cool ThreeJS effect you recently learned. But, it exists now. You can always iterate and improve your website, but having one and getting started with writing will take a long way.

We often wait for everything to be perfect and everything to be just right before we show it to the world. That's not the right approach here. Get started, share something, create something and improve it day by day.

Thanks for reading this article, I hope I could motivate you to finally create your own website without caring about perfectionism. If you create a website after reading this article, be sure to add it in the comments! I'd love to see what you come up with!