Site Setup

I’m not yet sure what shape this site is going to take, but let’s kick things off with some decision points on the website itself. No one is here yet, so I’ll do a Q&A with… myself.

Why set up your own website at all?

While I could just post on Twitter or Facebook, I wanted to (in concept) hearken back to a more decentralized web, and (in practice) have substantial creative control over how the site looks. Plus, actually going through the steps of setting up a site seemed fun. And how long was balthazard.dev going to stay available?? Had to snap that up.

What are you using to run the site?

This was fun to figure out! I decided on a static site generator (Jekyll), deployed through github pages, and I got the domain through NameCheap. There were some small hurdles along the way (setting up packages in Sublime - needed a particular version of openssl since higher versions break package control). A couple helpful articles for setting things up with DNS records:
Medium article on using a custom domain for GitHub pages GitHub article on managing a custom domain

What are you going to post about?

Probably a variety of things, including some interesting Ruby things, some soccer analytics, maybe some job search advice. I’ll figure out a better way to organize posts when there are more of them. Open to feedback on site direction!

Why now?

I was recently affected by a layoff at my last place of employment after nearly five years, so I finally now have the time.