Its 2025 and I built a personal website and hosted it on my own homelab. I like having hands-on experience and it is an effective method for learning. I like working on tech that is new and interesting to me, and getting to build something from the bottom up is a very rewarding experience. This way, I get to learn new skills with practical real-life experience. Here’s a list of things that I have learned while building the site:

Network configuration #

• Domain registrations, configuration and overall network security using Cloudfare
• Managing multiple DNS records, including setting up custom email domain.
• Router configuration to allow IP and port forwarding and setting up firewall rules
• Docker networking concepts to create secure networks between hosts and containers
• Linux DNS and Firewall configuration
• Setting up NGINX Proxy Manager for routing traffic from internet to flow to the appropriate web containers
• Setting up dynamic DNS to update Cloudfare DNS records whenever public IP changes

Static Site Generator (SSG) based website development #

• How SSGs like Hugo work
• Site build and deployment, both locally and on a public facing server
• Content authoring: Understanding YAML, front matter metadata usage
• HTML, CSS and a bit of Go HTML templates
• Typography elements and building the site based on aesthetics
• Template customisation

IndieWeb #

• Implemented Webmentions support with a third-party endpoint
• Included Microformats2 (mf2) classes, to allow third-party tools to parse website content and understand it structurally
• Decentralized identity verification with rel=me links.
• Syndication implemented partially by pulling Mastodon threads back into the original posts.

Content and Motivation #

In my opinion, building a website just for the sake of it doesn’t make sense and you need the appropriate content and the motivation to make it true to your identity. Derek Sivers’s nownownow page is a treasure trove collection of people from various walks of life who have built their personal websites and have so much wonderful content to share. Going through those sites, reading their posts, has introduced me to new areas and motivated and inspired me to keep writing.

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