Why I'm Rebuilding My Site For The 4th Time

I’m doing it again. The show goes on. Third sentence here.

I’ve decided to redesign my site for the fourth time. No, it’s not because I’m insane.

Now I know what you’re thinking : “Matt, your site already looks so good that it has redefined what I consider art!”. And to that I say what I always say : “thanks I guess”.

The genesis of the new build came about after I spoke to some amazing people at my current company about my career progression. 

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me or reads any of my writing that my dream is to be a full time developer and actually get paid to do my passion.

I feel incredibly grateful that there are people who took the time to share their honest opinion about my current development skills and whether or not I would be able to land a full time job with my current skill set. 

In the spirit of self growth, the most important and enlightening thing they shared with me was where I was lacking. 

The next step in my self-taught developer journey

Being self-taught, I have always had a certain lack of direction with my coding journey, so I wanted frank advice on where I could improve and what the next steps in my journey should be.

It was tempting to be despondent when I realised I had a bunch of new frameworks and languages to learn to be of employable standard.

But I realised that it’s actually a fantastic opportunity to rediscover what made me fall in love with coding in the first place.

I’ve been in a cycle of rinse and repeat with my coding recently, but working on my Visualising Wealth project and a top-secret world-changing work project helped me re-realise that I love learning new things and discovering quicker and more efficient ways to complete projects. 

Giving myself more time to work on coding projects

I also wanted a way that I could still write blogs, as it’s something I really enjoy doing, but also work on more long form projects like Visualising Wealth (I have a tonne of fun ideas cooked up), and host them all in the same place, so my site can work as both a portfolio and a collection of all my work, all on a site I own and operate. 

My new site is going to be built using some of the techniques suggested to me by my amazing coworkers and mentors, and will feature a blog and project section, so that I can accomplish everything I want to, producing both written content and more experiences and web apps as well.

I’ve already sunk about 25 hours into the new site build and I’m really enjoying it so far. It’s been a great exercise for me to get out of my comfort zone with coding and examine my knowledge gaps, so keep your eyes peeled for the new site over the next few weeks!