Building My Portfolio with Nuxt Content

I built a portfolio because, at some point, you need a place to put the things you've worked on. I have projects I'm proud of, and I wanted a way to share them in one place.

Right now, I'm also looking for opportunities, whether that's an internship or a future job. A portfolio makes that process a little easier because people can quickly see what I've built and what kinds of problems I enjoy working on.

That's really the main reason this website exists in the first place.

Why Nuxt Content?

Nuxt Content is a very easy way to manage content on a website. Everything is just Markdown files. You can add some YAML at the top for metadata, tags, dates, and whatever else you need.

For example, the tag above this page is just metadata from the Markdown file.

The projects don't even really use the Markdown body. Most of them are driven almost entirely by metadata. The layout is very repetitive, which is actually a good thing because it means I can focus on the content instead of rebuilding pages over and over again.

If I didn't use Nuxt Content, I'd basically have two options. I could build a completely static website with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, or I could build a full backend with a database, authentication, an admin dashboard, APIs, and all the other stuff that comes with it.

The second option is complete overkill for a portfolio website.

I'd have to host a database somewhere, build the backend, build the frontend, make API calls, manage authentication, and maintain all of it just so I can write a blog post every now and then.

That doesn't make much sense.

The static HTML approach is perfectly valid, but I find it tedious. I like being able to iterate quickly, and Nuxt gives me that.

I've been using Nuxt for a couple of years now and I'm very comfortable with it. I hadn't used Nuxt Content much before this project, but it turned out to be exactly what I needed.

The Design

Now let's talk about the design because I am a developer, not a designer.

I make websites. I know how they work. I know how to build applications. What I don't know is how to design something from scratch and make it look good.

I do have opinions, though. Everyone does. Most people can look at something and immediately tell whether they like it or not. I can do that too. Actually designing something is a completely different skill.

Maybe this website looks simple to you. Honestly, it looks pretty simple to me as well. You could probably design something like this. Matter of fact, I could probably design something like this if I spent enough time on it.

I just didn't want to.

Instead, I used ChatGPT to generate prompts for Google Stitch. Stitch would generate a design, I'd look at it, decide what looked bad, send it back to ChatGPT, ask for improvements, generate new prompts, and repeat the process.

I did that a couple of times until I got something that looked close to what I wanted.

After that, I started making my own changes. I'd look at a section and think maybe it needs a border. Maybe the spacing is off. Maybe this button should be somewhere else. The generated designs were a starting point, not the final result.

Even AI isn't particularly good at design yet. It gets some things right, but it also has a tendency to generate the same style over and over again. Maybe you've seen those AI-generated applications before. They all kind of look the same. Neon borders, glowing buttons, massive gradients, and a bunch of effects that look impressive for about five seconds before they become annoying. I've tried to avoid that stuff because I don't really like it.

I like websites that are easy to use. I like websites that load quickly. I like websites that get to the point. That's what I wanted this portfolio to do.

For the rest of the site, I wrote everything myself. That's the part I actually enjoy. I like building things. I like writing code. I like looking at code and figuring out how to make it better. That's the fun part.

What's Next?

For the portfolio itself, the next step is pretty obvious.

I need to add projects.

The whole point of this website is to showcase projects, so it would be nice if there were more of them.

I also need to keep writing blog posts if I feel like it. Usually I don't.

I tend to write one blog post, think it's a great idea, and then never write another one again. Maybe this time will be different.

If you see more blog posts in the future, you'll know how that turned out. If this is still the only blog post on the website six months from now, you'll also know how that turned out.

Hopefully the portfolio ends up being full of projects, though. That's really the main goal. I want projects with demos, source code, decent documentation, and enough detail that people can actually see how they were built.

I should probably write more tests as well. I know how to write tests. That's not the problem. I just don't enjoy writing them.

Most of the time I test things manually. If I click the button and it works, then it works. Maybe that's not the best strategy in the world, but it's the strategy I've been using for years. Most of the time it works fine.

Anyway, that's pretty much it for now.

I'll catch you in the next blog post, the next project, or maybe somewhere in real life if we end up working together.