Redesigning my personal site to v3 using NextJS

After four years running this site on Jekyll with GitHub Pages, I decided it was time for a change.

Jekyll served me well. It was simple, free to host, and I barely had to think about it — which, when you’re spending most of your energy on actual work and music, is a pretty good deal. But it started feeling limiting. Static templates, no real interactivity, and every time I wanted to add something it felt like fighting the grain of the tool.

why nextjs

I wanted server-side rendering and static site generation under the same roof, a proper React ecosystem, and the ability to actually build interactive things without bolting on workarounds.

Next.js gave me that. The file-based routing is clean, the deployment story with Vercel is frictionless, and it’s well-documented enough that I could move fast without constantly reading the docs.

The site you’re looking at now is v3. It has the same sections the old one had — about, resume, projects, blog — but rebuilt from scratch with a proper component structure.

this is still temporary

I’ll be honest: the plan was always to eventually move to Svelte. I wanted to learn it properly, and building a personal site is a decent forcing function. Next.js was the pragmatic choice while I figured that out.

This iteration won’t be the last. But it’s a real improvement over what was there before, and sometimes shipping something good enough is better than holding out for perfect.

v4 is already in my head. we’ll see.