What started out as a simple static HTML page as a project during the Cybersecurity Class to setup a self-hosted blog website has now turned into little more complex portfolio website.
In the past, mainly for DJ purposes, have had a pretty simple and very cost effective website that was designed by a person within my DJ community, and then hosted with WordPress on a managed hosting provider. This original site was just intended to be a single, and nearly “One page” design that was a hub for people looking for more information about me and the services I offered very quickly and efficiently. As I did not want to commit a ton of resources or financials to this, the theme was a basic implementation of a free wordpress theme and customizations were kept to a minimum.
This worked great in the beginning (around 2016 timeline), but overtime, as my priorities changed, and as the environment around me changed, there began a constant nag at me that I needed an update to the site as it was just feeling too archaic and “90s” or early “2000s” style at least in theme and feel. Before, I didn’t really understand website design, and there likely wasn’t a lot of 3rd party options or services readily available to low-budget consumers at the time (I hadn’t looked as I was not really in the market to begin with at the time). But now, there are plently of pre-designed and fully customizable services, products, features and templates at reasonable price points that combined with how straight forward website design and hosting was presented during the class, it seemed like the ideal time to do a refresh.
Seeing as how I was intending to transition into Cybersecurity during this time, it dawned on me to be the perfect opportunity to create, self-manage, and secure my own portfolio pertaining to my Cybersecurity endeavors. Not only would it allow me to put my newly learned knowledge to work by designing and hosting the site on a Linux server through the Linux Command Line Interface, but it would also be able to offer additional benefits of visually demonstrating my projects, skills, and work-ethics to potential employers in a new-to-me career field.
Some of the key parts that went into, or involved with the hosting of this professionally designed website portfolio:
Not only was this project needed, it actually taught me a lot more about website design, hosting, as well as real life examples of Linux and CLI use cases. I can’t say it was all fun and games getting this site setup (tons of hours of work, and manual HTML coding to create each and every page here), but I did enjoy it, and am super happy with the outcome! I will say that I do still kind of prefer a one page style as I have a bias that people aren’t too keen on scrolling “endlessly” on sites like this, but the theme, at least for me, makes it a lot more bearable.
Updated 8/2024 – This website has begun migrating back into a WordPress site for more streamlined management as well as blogging capability. Still hosted and self managed.