The Evolution of My Personal Website: A Journey Through Technologies

Published on: June 10, 2025

The web is constantly evolving, and my personal site perfectly reflects this. As a web development professional and solutions architect, I've used this personal laboratory to explore emerging technologies and refine my skills. Follow my technical journey that illustrates the trends in web development in recent years.

The Beginnings: WordPress and PHP

Like many developers, I started with a proven solution: WordPress. This platform offered an ideal combination of flexibility and ease of use. The theme was customized to reflect my professional identity, but I quickly felt the need to explore more modern alternatives.

Characteristics of this version:

  • WordPress backend in PHP
  • Classic page lifecycle with full reloads
  • MySQL database for content storage
  • Custom theme with PHP templates

The Hugo Experience: First Steps Towards Static Sites

My first foray into the world of static site generators was with Hugo, a framework written in Go and recognized for its exceptional generation speed. This stage represented a significant break from the WordPress model, favoring simplicity and performance over functional richness.

Hugo allowed me to discover the advantages of a database-free architecture, where content is stored as Markdown files and transformed into static HTML during the build process.

Characteristics of this version:

  • Ultra-fast generation thanks to the Go engine
  • Content in Markdown with YAML front matter
  • Custom theme with Hugo's templating language
  • Git-centered workflow for content updates
  • Simplified deployment via static files
  • No database, reducing vulnerabilities

This transition to Hugo was a true revelation regarding the benefits of static sites: loading speed, enhanced security, and hosting simplicity. It was a decisive step toward full adoption of the JAMstack approach.

VitePress: Adopting JavaScript Static Site Generators

For my second experience with a static site generator, I opted for a radically different approach using VitePress, a static site generator based on Vite and Vue.js. This transition marks an important shift toward JAMstack architecture (JavaScript, APIs, and Markup).

VitePress allowed me to create an extremely fast site where content is pre-rendered as static HTML, while retaining the ability to integrate interactive Vue.js components when necessary. Content was primarily written in Markdown, which greatly simplified the writing and maintenance process.

Characteristics of this version:

  • Static site generation with VitePress
  • Content in Markdown for simplified writing
  • Styling with UnoCSS (a Tailwind variant with Uno and Wind presets)
  • Custom build scripts for search database generation
  • Automated deployment system via FTP
  • Support for webhooks allowing remote updates
  • Automatic RSS feed generation

This "content-first" approach allowed me to focus more on content quality rather than technical complexity. This shift to a static site brought significant improvements in terms of performance, security, and maintenance simplicity, while allowing me to explore the benefits of the JAMstack approach.

The Astro Era: Performance and Simplicity

The arrival of Astro marked an important turning point in how I designed the site. Astro offers a hybrid approach that appealed to me: statically generated HTML for speed, with "islands" of interactive JavaScript only where necessary.

Characteristics of this version:

  • Astro framework for page generation
  • Partial hydration ("islands architecture")
  • Integration of React components only when necessary
  • Markdown for content management
  • Enhanced performance optimization (Core Web Vitals)

Headless Architecture with Optimizely DXP

The latest evolution represents the culmination of this quest for balance between performance, user experience, and maintainability.

As an Optimizely MVP, I naturally chose to explore the possibilities offered by Optimizely SaaS in headless mode, coupled with Astro for the frontend. This architecture completely separates content management from its presentation.

Characteristics of this version:

  • Complete JAMstack architecture
  • Astro as frontend framework
  • Optimizely SaaS as headless CMS
  • GraphQL queries to retrieve content
  • TypeScript for type safety
  • Tailwind CSS for UI styling
  • Minimalist design centered on content

The Benefits of this Evolution

This technological progression has brought several significant advantages:

  1. Performance: Loading times are now almost instantaneous thanks to pre-rendered HTML and selective hydration.
  2. Developer Experience: TypeScript and modern tools have greatly improved code maintainability.
  3. Security: The JAMstack architecture eliminates many traditional attack vectors.
  4. Scalability: The separation of content and presentation facilitates future evolutions.
  5. SEO: Content being directly available in the HTML, search engines can index it efficiently.

Conclusion: The Importance of Constant Iteration

This journey through the different versions of my personal site illustrates the importance of a continuous improvement approach. Each iteration has brought its own learnings and allowed me to explore new approaches.

As a solutions architect at Verndale and Optimizely MVP, I continue to explore the frontiers of modern web technologies. My personal site remains a privileged experimentation laboratory, where new ideas can be tested before being applied to client projects.

The current trend toward decoupled architectures and hybrid site generation (partially static, partially dynamic) seems particularly promising to me. It combines the best of both worlds: the performance of static sites and the flexibility of dynamic applications.

The adventure continues, and I'm eager to see which new technologies will shape the next iteration of this site.