Lately I’ve been improving my personal site a little every day, and it’s getting better. Here are some thoughts on having a personal site.
Why a personal site?
You fully control the content and design.
I also post on note, but the narrow text column makes code hard to read.
For tech posts I could use Qiita or Zenn and probably get more views, but those aren’t great for non‑tech posts.
I want a place that holds both tech and non‑tech posts—a site that conveys who I am. A personal site fits that.
How to build one
There are many options: no‑code tools like WordPress, Wix, and STUDIO are convenient for many people.
But hand‑crafting your site is also a good option. With a static site generator it’s quite simple.
Static site generators
Popular ones include Astro, Hugo, and Jekyll.
This site uses Next.js’s static generation.
Templates can get you a decent design quickly, and if you want to customize, you can change anything at the source level.
Static sites are also cost‑effective. This one is on Cloudflare Pages, and aside from the domain (~1,000 JPY/year), it costs essentially nothing to run.
Of course the barrier to entry is higher, and features you’d get via a WordPress plugin may require custom development.
But if you enjoy the act of building, I highly recommend it.