How I Set Up This Website
Type of Content:
Miscellaneous
One of the main reasons I found myself procrastinating to create this website was because I had a specific vision in mind for this site and I wasn't technically adept enough to execute it in a stable and automated manner. My original problem statement was as follows:
I wanted a portfolio site where I could showcase my work and my existence.
I wanted there to be a blog section which I could use to pen everything that goes on in my brain.
I wanted a clean and minimalist design for this space since it aligns with my design principles.
I wanted to automate as much of the syncing and backend processes as possible (sort of like how a CI/CD pipeline functions)
And I wanted to pay as little amount of money for it as possible.
I checked out a bunch of different tools, including but not limited to:
OSS Templates from GitHub - Some great work out there by developers, but I don't nearly have the technical ability to grapple with the minutiae that would come with something like this (yet.)
Webflow - Don't really like the UI, takes too much tinkering to get desired outcomes, and expensive.
Wix - eCommerce focused, not a lot of use for my use cases.
Siter - Not feature rich, no out-of-the-box support for a CMS, and limited to 50 pages for base plan (including blogs)
After some back-of-the-mind evaluations, I ended up settling for Framer.
Framer turned out to be a great solution for hosting this website. I'd heard a lot of ravings about it on Twitter/X, it seemed to be well accepted and was jam-packed with features.
The editor was intuitive, the resources were spectacular and most of all, the marketplace was amazing.
The pricing also seemed like it was reasonable. For my needs, I deduced that the Basic plan would be a perfect fit.
Setting Up Framer + Associated Costs
After I spent 4 hours grappling with the copy of a template I had created a couple of weeks ago, the website was finally in a place that I was happy with. Everything was looking perfect (except one alignment issue that I still need to figure out)
The costs were fairly cheap:
Framer Subscription for a Basic Site - INR 725 per month (will eventually shift to yearly for reducing mental overhead)
Custom domain (www.cyrilreynolds.com) - $8.98 for 1 year ~ $0.74 per month i.e. INR 62 per month
Total associated costs < INR 800 per month.
Definitely something I can live with.
Next step: figuring out how to my Obsidian Vault to the Framer CMS so that I can setup a more frictionless way for me to write, and for it to appear on this website.