For Starters, How This Was Built
Idea and Concept
I always planned to create a website, but I didn't really have the motivation to go for it. I've always been more of the Machine Learning and back-end person. Though, I worked recently with Jetpack Compose. Pretty fun!
Well, speaking of websites, surprisingly I made a lot of them. But these are the documentation websites for the APIs and library I developed. So my idea is to leverage these tools, so I can have some things to start with, the build things from there. You know, the agile way.
Documentation Tool
I've always used Sphinx for my documentation needs, mostly because I worked a lot in Python. But as I worked with other languages, I looked for alternatives that worked well with other pages. And from there I found MkDocs.
MkDocs uses markdown files in order to create documentation. This is
something familiar, as most README files are written in Markdown.
MkDocs also has a theme called MkDocs Material. It looks good and has a lot of customization options that are available. I am so impressed with how much it provides out of the box.
Deployment
The code is hosted in GitHub, so it was easy to go for deploying it in GitHub Pages with GitHub Actions. Documentations are mostly static web pages, so GitHub Pages are enough for it. For CI, MkDocs and MkDocs Material have you covered with their GitHub Actions support and examples.
Domain Name
GitHub Pages also supports custom domain names. They also provide HTTPS once deployed with Let's Encrypt. For domain names, one can get them from Freenom for free for as long as 1 year. As to why I chose Freenom, well, I've been using it for our Minecraft servers.
Wrapping Up
Granted, at the end of the day, documentation tools are made for their purpose. Creating your own personal website will still give you more creative freedom.
However, being able to write my thoughts out in something I can version is something I value. MkDocs Material also has everything I want, both in terms of functionality and visual.
Who knows? Maybe in the future, I can move the things I have written in a proper website I created.