program script digital wallpaper
Photo by Maik Jonietz on Unsplash

I realize this is not video game-related and probably won’t be seen by most visitors, but I wanted it here for any web developers out there. Or anyone who is hoping to make a website of their own for that matter. While not exhaustive, this is a description of some tools and services I’ve used to make mine a reality.

Content Management

For managing content, I’m currently using WordPress. In the past, I’ve tried many other content platforms and even built my own. There is just nothing faster or more straight forward to get running and develop for than WordPress. I have it set up with a custom theme, a couple of custom post types, and a handful of custom Gutenberg blocks that I’ve developed. I’m also using a few choice plugins to handle things I didn’t need or want to build myself—for example, WP Super Cache, Yet Another Related Posts Plugin and Yoast SEO.

Servers and Hosting

I have the website hosted across two DigitalOcean Droplets, each running Ubuntu. One is an Apache web server, and the other one is a MySQL database server. It’s a pretty standard setup, but I wanted to configure it myself instead of using a one-click WordPress install button. For a while, I had a more complex setup with self-hosted analytics and caching servers but decided it was overkill, and I didn’t really need it.

DNS, CDN, etc.

I have Cloudflare set up in front of the site to handle DNS, caching and content delivery. This should seamlessly improve performance and security. Plus, their WordPress plugin hooks into system events so it can purge any cached pages when you publish or update. Did I mention it’s free?

Script and Style

I tried using as little JavaScript as possible for this build, but I included quicklink to prefetch links and improve performance. I also have a couple of Preact components I render to the page for handling more complex interactions. It’s all bundled together with microbundle.

Styling is another thing I try to keep very simple. I always start with Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset then add in Paul Irish’s box-sizing recommendation. And I like to use Sass (SCSS syntax) because it helps me keep my code more modular and neat than when I don’t use it.

Software

I use Visual Studio Code as my primary day-to-day text editor. And for years, I have been using Transmit as my client of choice for working with FTP. Before uploading any images or graphics I run them through the ImageOptim app.

If there is anything else you want to know about, feel free to get in touch with me. I’m happy to answer any reasonable questions.

More interested in pixels than bytes? I have a page about the design too.