Making a Website with Stackbit

Published August 19, 2020 11:05 AM

I had no idea I wanted to re-write my personal website. I was in the process of learning React and had recently joined the Dev.to community and saw someone mention Stackbit. I personally had been wanting a more aesthetically pleasing website than the one I had made in college, but I was intimidated by all the options and didn't want to use anything more advance than plain ol' HTML and CSS because I didn't know any front-end languages and frameworks. Additionally, I was interested in having a personal blog as a way to share my challenges, and I had previously looked at Jekyll, Ghost and WordPress but never took the jump.

I planned on spending some after work free time learning Redux, but the good things people had to say about Stackbit had me intrigued. While I was browsing the themes, I decided to created an account. There was a good variety of the options you could choose for setting up your website. I decided to go with Gatsby the React Static Site Generator (SSG) and Netlify CMS for the Content Management System. The configuration I went with was pure chance. I chose Gatsby because, like I mentioned, I'm currently learning React and I thought it would be a good way to broaden my knowledge of the ecosystem, and I assumed that since the website was begin hosted by Netlify then it would have good support for Netlify CMS.

Once I connected my GitHub account it generated the site in seconds. I instantly updated the content and made the site my own. I'm not sure if Gatsby was the right choice regarding simplicity, but I have been able to move components around and add where I want to. I have a couple of improvements I'd like to make so I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

Overall I'm pretty statisfied with Stackbit. It allowed me to create a website with great speed and flexibility.

If you have any questions regarding making a website with Stackbit or anything else please reach out!