
# Revamping My Personal Site with Minimalism in Mind
In this post, I outline the motivation for revamping my personal site. Following a minimalist philosophy, I explain my choices and process in creating everything you currently see on my site.

## Starting with why
Having somewhere to publish my thoughts and ideas has always seemed like an integral development tool. Note, I am being especially conscious to call it a *development* tool. As a software developer, it should help me explain my decisions concerning the tools I use, the methodologies I follow, and the techniques I employ. In a vast field like quantitative finance, starting from an idea for a post can help narrow in on exactly what I wish to learn.

Below is a screenshot of my previous website. I hope you find that there is even slight improvement in the aesthetics.

![Image](/images/post_assets/revamp/old_site.png)

I think I did a lot of things *right* with it. But of course, I also did a lot of *wrong*. Perhaps my time would have been better spent modifying the old code. Though, the prospect of starting fresh seemed to resonate with me. I have learned much more about both code and myself in the past couple of years. I felt a ground-up redesign would yield the best result.

The code of the old site gives me anxiety and I could not bring myself to publish on it. With that admittedly petty rationale, I decided to start over.

## The rough idea
I believe something I got acutely wrong with the previous site, was the lack of focus. There are some questions that I probably should have asked myself prior to development.
- Who is the site for? 
- What do I want people to engage with? 
- What gives the visitor the most value?

All of this essentially became an after-thought. No one cares about who I am. They want to read something interesting, learn something new, or laugh at my ignorance. **Content is king.** With this realization, I set out to design the site with content as the centrepiece.

## The content
Okay, so it was plainly obvious that content should be the main focus. But what content should I create? What am I qualified to share?

Concerning what to create, I think its fairly simple: anything I find interesting. I have longed harboured a passion for data science and quantitative finance. So much so, that I pursued a degree in financial mathematics and taught myself full-stack development to help pursue either field. I currently find myself as a professional full-stack developer at a small consultancy specializing in the financial technology industry. Naturally, I thought I should share my thoughts on *quantitative finance, data science, and development*.

The question of what I am *qualified* to share thoughts on is more nuanced. I firmly believe the only person who can assess my credibility is the reader. I am not one who believes in credentialism. Nor do I believe in holding "experts" blindly in high esteem. No amount of letters after a name or temporal measures of experience should qualify one as an authority on a topic. Strictly the strength of one's ideas and actions should build confidence in them. As such, I would not expect anyone to trust my writing solely referencing my background.

I don't think I am going to have many iron-clad, extremely well-thought-out write-ups. I intend to maintain the tone of a learner, leaving mistakes and missteps published.

## The design
I am not a designer, and wanted to make sure the design reflected my limited capabilities. This essentially amounted to following solid design principles and keeping things simple. I have learned about this watching [Gary Simon](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVyRiMvfUNMA1UPlDPzG5Ow) on YouTube. Following his advice, I started with mock-ups on [Figma](https://www.figma.com/).

I knew that if I kept things simple, I could ensure the content is maintained as the focus (all while looking half-decent).

![Image](/images/post_assets/revamp/figma_design.png)

## The tech stack
I think I got the ideal tech stack mostly correct on my last go. I think it is optimal to have the site be completely statically served. This is made possible with [static site generators](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/04/14/what-is-a-static-site-generator-and-3-ways-to-find-the-best-one/). My favourite, given that it is React based and has other capabilities, is [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/).

There are many advantages to having a static site. What I care about most is performance, and the ease of hosting (both in a cost and effort sense). It is also rather trivial to integrate building and deploying into a CI/CD pipeline.

Additionally, I wanted to keep the tech stack simple and minimalistic. The easiest path I can conceive a blog taking to become bloated is through its content management system. This part I struggled on. I wanted to build on a headless CMS like [Strapi](https://strapi.io/). In the end, I settled on a simple markdown rendering plugin. With this, I can just have my blog posts stored as markdown files on the repo, and the build will take care of the rest.

The specific package that I settled on to achieve the desired markdown rendering is [micromark](https://github.com/micromark/micromark).

So essentially the stack is simply:
- Next.js to use my React experience to generate a static site
- micromark to render posts from markdown files stored on the repo
- Serverles hosting on [Cloudflare Pages](https://pages.cloudflare.com/)

To release a new post, I just have to commit and push the corresponding markdown file into the repo hosted on GitHub. A new build will be initiated by Cloudflare and promptly deployed. **Simple**.

I am sure to true tech-minimalists, this may still seem like a convoluted stack. Though personally, I think it offers a good balance of extensibility and productivity.

Now that it is (mostly) built, I hope you will find something of value during your visits.


Matthew Mercuri

FEATURED

Revamping My Personal Site with Minimalism in Mind