Hello World! - My First Blog Post

Little over an year ago I decided to build a personal web space where I can document, archive & organise my work, and possibly share it with others. Since I have no formal training anything remotely related to IT or web development, it proved to be quite a bit of a challenge.

There are three steps in my approach. I am going to briefly describe them on the following blog post.

1. Purchasing a web domain
2. Building a website
3. Update the content

1. Purchasing a web domain

Though there are many ways one can own a personal webspace without purchasing a domain space, I chose to purchase one. Reason? Since I wanted to share this with others, both in my personal and professional circle, I wanted one with my name on it.

Between GoDaddy and Google Domains, I chose to go with Google Domains after considering a couple of things.

1. Fast and reliable
2. Does not serve any ads on the website pages
3. Integration with top website builders including Netlify
4. Easy email setup with email forwarding or Google Workspace
5. Cheaper in the long run
6. 20% off at the time of purchase

2. Building a website

There are many ways to build a website like Wix, SquareSpace, Weebly, etc. All of them are great, but I had to choose one that fits within my workflow which is reproducible, dynamic and open. I decided to go with Netlify for this purpose. Again, there are many considerations that went before deciding on Netlify.

1. Dynamic and high performant
2. Integrates seamlessly with Github
3. Easy-to-use interface
4. Lets me prototype before deploying
5. Incredibly fast
6. Extensive documentation and community support
7. Supports Hugo and Blogdown

3. Update the content

I am a huge fan of Dr. Allison Hill and her work. If you are an R enthusiast and have not heard of her, then I strongly encourage you to go through her excellent work. She is simply marvellous! Her talks, tutorials and blog-posts are a treat to any beginner/intermediate-level R user. I must confess that shamelessly I stole her Hugo Apéro theme because it is just stunning! An important reason why I choose Dr. Hills work is that it is based on Yihui Xie’s work, blogdown, another R guru that I idolise.

Coming from a medical background, I am at a slight disadvantage in terms of web-development. However, Dr. Hill makes it very easy with her Hugo Apéro. I can think of a million reasons why I chose Hugo Apéro for building my personal website but the top five are.

1. Excellent Documentation including blogs, talks and Youtube videos
2. Highly Customisable
3. Feature Rich
4. Ergonomic Code
5. Simply Stunning!

After a very exiting year, the wish comes true. My quest for building a website is over. https://arunmitra.com/ is online.

This also marks the beginning of a thrilling journey, one that I hope you will travel together with me. I hope I will grow, learn, and enjoy in this trip. I hope you will too.