The problem is I have no design skills and very little motivation to spend an excessive amount of time learning things like CSS. Is there a modern equivalent of pretty Lego blocks that I can use to put together something that might look nice?
Here is the source code to my own website (in Hugo) if it’s helpful: https://github.com/hnarayanan/harishnarayanan.org
Much more flexible to just write your own code than trying to configure Hugo or Jekyll.
- Pick a theme: https://astro.build/themes/ - Pick where to deploy: https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/deploy/ - write your content in markdown or JSX templates (very easy to learn if you're new to it)
I think the theme is pretty clean and lean and is kinda enough for me that also don't want to mess around with css and styling. And the blog is something basically no-one would find or read unless they are getting involved with me as freelancer (embedded wireless).
[0][https://tiliaradix.com/] [1][https://gohugo.io/] [2][https://github.com/nodejh/hugo-theme-mini]
It works for me. You may wish to give it a try, or try one of these https://jamstack.org/generators/
Before it was made with Zola [2], which is also nice.
Maybe I'll give hugo's "blonde" theme a shot in the future, because it integrates dark mode pretty well.
2: https://themes.gohugo.io/themes/blonde/
3: https://pilabor.com/blog/2021/05/building-a-blog-with-hugo/
For the HTML generation you don't need much if you go this route. I have built sites by writing markdown, generating HTML with Pandoc and then voila done.
I work at a headless CMS company, and I see Astro frequently taking the place of Next and Svelte and Vue for simpler sites these days, especially for people who don't want to do a lot of coding.
You don't need to design anything or learn the intricacies of frontend, just pick a theme you like, maybe tweak the colors and fonts a bit if you must, but otherwise it's pretty much just providing your own content and the framework takes care of the rest of it.
I'd switch to Hugo, but every time I try, I give up. It's not that I can't, it's too much up-front investment and fiddling than I care to deal with (recommendations and tips appreciated).
Why not one of the many “no code” SAAS’s targeting consumers?
I am assuming a portfolio is the purpose. Squarespace (etc.) probably have many templates that will be good enough. It is unrealistic to expect to roll your own strong aesthetic execution without years of experience. Of course I could be wrong about your actual purpose and you may not need strong aesthetic execution.
Buying may be better than building. Good luck.