I wanted to update my older website that I had created in Spring of 2017. The older website was simply built from scratch using only PHP, JavaScript, and MySQL. I decided to use the opportunity to learn the very popular ReactJS library. After exploring many different framework options, I settled on the popular static site generator framework built upon ReactJS and ES6, Gatsby. This website is my first introduction and experience working with React components and ES6 syntax, primarily arrow functions.

The idea to update my website was born out of two separate concerns or requirements. First, I wanted a better interface for producing readable content such as blog posts and booknotes. I wasn’t completely satisfied with the interface that I had created for my older website but I also did not want to go forward with a traditional WordPress solution. Second, I wanted an excuse to learn many of the concepts involved in the ReactJS library, and this would give me an opportunity to do so.

Rather than building strictly from scratch, I decided to use the Gatsby framework for a lot of the performance benefits and many of the boiler plate functionality built directly into the framework to help the website be more visible on the internet. I had no experience with static site generators, so this would be my first. I also wanted to retain much of the structure of the original website while the flexibility of using markdown files would give me an opportunitiy to define more information for the content of my website rather than just the textual content of the post.