I had wanted to setup my own website for so long. The main reason was simply to make myself visible on the net. Other benefits include:
- Platform for blogging about this and that
- Showcase my works (I am a software engineer, btw)
- Share my knowledge on the stuff I like
- …
I had been looking for some alternatives when I found github pages. Github pages can host static pages. And for me that’s enough as I would not need a web application. While reading its description, I noticed one very interesting feature: blog with Jekyll
I thought, what was this Jekyll thing, but it had me at “Markdown”. I had been writing notes using markdown for sometimes, and it had been helpful to keep focus on content rather than styles. The more I read about Jekyll, the more interesting it was. A lot of customizable templates available, easy to setup, what more could I ask for?
However, the next feature was as interesting, custom domain! I could use my own domain for github pages for free!
So I looked for the best affordable domain resgistrants and chose namecheap. I searched for “mbaharsyah” domain and it suggested quite a number of alternatives like “mbaharsyah.com”, “mbaharsyah.net”, etc… But inspired by a certain company I picked “mbaharsyah.xyz”, and it was on sale for first year too!
After I got all these ingredients:
- Web Hosting (Github Pages)
- Domain Name (from namecheap)
- Tools (Jekyll, markdown, etc…)
I started to build the website up, and the next post will describe how I used all those ingredients in geeky language ;)