While it has been more than one month in the making, for this month’s blog entry I’ll be talking about how I’ve pieced it all together. For the most part, it is a pretty standard node server using express, mysql, sequelize (ORM), and a little bit of vue. I originally wanted to have everything be a static webpage, but vue was pretty lightweight. I have considered switching to static webpage generators, but right now I am very happy with the development process.

I included bootstrap on the website for a while, but I decided against it. I wanted to have a unique look, and using bootstrap gave it that feel a lot of websites have. It wasn’t hard to include a little CSS to do a few things I was using bootstrap for anyway. I want to keep the website pretty quick too, and bootstrap really added to the size of a page.

I set up an admin page that allows me to log in and post to a board. Currently there are bread, index, and blog boards. Right now I’m just posting plain text, with the option to attach images and also tags. I also have page with essays, which is static for now. I’m not sure how I want to organize this section, so I am focusing on other stuff for now. The admin page also collects some statistics about routes. I set a unique cookie when a user starts a session, and I track their requests to the server. The users IP isn’t stored, keeping privacy in mind. I’m not doing too much with this data right now, but eventually I could get a better idea of what a user’s session typically looks like, and how many sessions are started.

My goal in starting this website was to have fun. I thought that showing off stuff I baked would be a good excuse to make a website, and I have had a good time making one. It encourages me to build a cool website, and also bake delicious bread. I also want to write more, and this platform offers I good excuse to blog too. I’m going to try to get blog posts out monthly. I’d like to do weekly even, but I know that isn’t likely right now.