In the past I was building a site in NodeJS to handle my portfolio, but I could not afford a VPS plan. I could probably build something in PHP, I’ve had promising results with querying a database. However, getting information the exact way I want it is kind of a pain. I thought about the possibility of building a PHP CRUD, but I’m not the biggest fan of WordPress. It’s cheap, convenient, and does what I need without much work on my end. It’s also an incredibly complex system under the hood maintained by a lot of people who know more than me. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel I’m just going to look at a CMS.
The acronym CMS stands for Content Management System, and they can be a convenient way of handling a ton of content. A lot of major sites have their own, and that’s cool. There’s also a trend with a lot of programmers following tutorials and creating cookie cutter sites. A site like that is great for hosting on Azure or AWS for free, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. Much like a budget cell phone plan you’re getting unused resources, and in this case it’s in a limited capacity. I’ve used Drupal in the past and I like it for content, but not so much blogging. The primary benefit of a CMS is that will be a lot easier to create and stick to a content schedule. This project was a neat challenge though, and I hope you enjoyed the journey. Lastly, I’m sorry this is how the journey ended. I’ll try to hack the opensource software from time to time to add personal touches.