manjotbal.ca
About
I decided to create my own personal website. Currently it is just a portfolio where I can showcase some of the projects I have made in detail. In the future I plan on writing some blogs, so that will be an update I will need to make.
Tech
DNS and Hosting
Since this whole site is simply serving static HTML/CSS files, I decided to host on a rented cloud VPS. The hosting provider I chose to go with was Vultr because their plans are priced pretty well and they also had servers available close to Alberta (Seattle). I spun up a Debian server running Nginx and simply copy over the files to the web directory whenever I make an update.
My domain name is registered with Canspace because they offer pretty cheap prices with .ca domain names. I let Vultr handle DNS rather than my domain name registrar because this allows me to easily switch domain name registrars if I ever need to.
Static Site Generation
I am using Jinja as the static site generator (SSG) for my website. Python is a really easy language to work with, which is why chose to use Jinja.
One other thing you may not have noticed is that this whole website is built without the use of JavaScript. There is nothing wrong with using JavaScript on the frontend on your website, (though some may beg to differ) but the modern web has become bloated with uneccssary Javascript. So, I made it a challenge to see if I could make a functional website without using it whatsoever. The only spot where I may add JavaScript in the future is where I have embedded videos, such as on my Perlin Noise and HyperBright project pages. Using dash.js would allow me to save on bandwidth by adaptively setting the bitrate of the video based on the client's network speed.
Under the contact section you will notice that my email uses my own domain name, manjotbal.ca. One way to accomplish this would have been too host my own email server, but that seemed like too much maintenance work for a single email. So, I decided to go with an email hosting provider that had a focus on user privacy. I ended up going with Tutanota, an email provider based in Germany. They claim to not read user's emails or allow third-party advertisers to do so, unlike other email providers like Google and Microsoft Outlook. So far it has been a pleasant experience. One thing to be aware of is that Tutanota does not support IMAP so you will have to use either their web-client or their open source desktop/mobile client to access your inbox.