Website Update: 2022
After 5 years of running my quilt website on WordPress, I decided to reboot my website in a React + NextJS + TypeScript custom app.
Before I go into why, let's take a brief trip down memory lane: I created my website in 2017 in preparation for a book release, having been requested a website URL for a link share. At the time I had a photo website as I was still working part time as a photographer on weekends, while I was gradually ramping up my interest in quilting. WordPress appealed to me because I could drop it onto the same server as my photo site, install a theme, and immediately start publishing.
Since late 2017 WordPress has worked well enough, however since that time I've built out a handful of custom web quilty tools on my website, which were occasionally a bit of a headache to get working within WordPress. I also hosted WordPress on my own server and maintained that server, which came with it's own fun challenges and inconveniences!
This year, I started seeing more issues with my WordPress setup and didn't prioritize troubleshooting those issues. While long-form blogging is still popular in some ways, most of my "quilting community" and interaction has shifted elsewhere (e.g. Instagram). Without taking advantage of comments on WordPress, my website became a fairly simple static website where I hosted my quilt galleries, tools, and occasionally blogged. I started thinking through alternative options and ultimately settled on wanting to reboot the website. And it just so happens that my day job (as a software engineer) allowed me to build up some skills in a direction that would help support this website reboot.
I finally put this plan into action in the last few weeks and fully migrated my WordPress site over to a static built site. I've also shared the code for any of my fellow curious quilters who want to see "actual code". I've ditched comments, search, and WordPress plugins for the sake of minimal hosting concerns and more control over how I share here!
You can still find me on Instagram and chat with me there. And all of my quilty tools remain intact and updated - they might look a little different here and there, but they are still the same tools in essence!
