thaldorfhuelsbeck

Naturally, since I started learning to code, I needed a professional portfolio website to showcase my technical capabilities and discover new opportunities. The challenge was building a platform that could evolve with my growing skills, while maintaining a professional presentation.

The solution required showcasing my skill proficiency in the way that it was engineered, while still being easily maintainable and changeable.

The earliest versions suffered from either over-complexity or under-development as I tried everything from basic HTML/CSS to some crazy MongoDB/React combinations.

I implemented an iterative development strategy spanning 8 major versions over the past 7 years (so far). This allowed me to test different technology stacks and architectural approaches, and evaluate them based on practicality vs. presentation.

After evaluating solutions ranging from complex database-driven applications with authentication, to static sites with .json or .md data directly in the repository, I converged upon a modern headless CMS architecture.

I selected specific technologies based on industry adoption, documentation quality, and business scalability, rather than just elegance or novelty. I prioritized component reusability, so I can improve upon the site without switching stacks again.

I built the current version using Next.js with TypeScript, Sanity.io headless CMS, Tailwind CSS, and shadcn/ui component library.

I was able to leverage common features of each of these technologies to implement a component-driven architecture that enables rapid prototyping and consistent design patterns, even across multiple other client projects.

This stack provides, in my opinion, excellent developer experience with comprehensive documentation, a strong community, and strong type safety enabling more IDE features.

• Successfully established the online presence which has generated consistent new opportunities over multiple years, and then continued to improve upon it iteratively without any downtime.
• The final architecture ultimately achieved the goal to serve as both a showcase of my software design and development capabilities, and a practical foundation for client work.
• The full history of the platform demonstrates my technical evolution, my commitment to best practices, and my focus on business development.