Building This Site

Hosting This Site: Technology Stack and Workflow

This site is hosted using a variety of technologies, each playing a specific role in creating a functional and efficient environment:

TrueNAS Scale – My primary NAS and hypervisor, utilizing ZFS for redundancy.
Ansible – Defines the state of the server, providing a pseudo-CI/CD pipeline for this site.
Hugo – Handles static site generation.
Docker – Hosts the Nginx and Cloudflare Tunnel containers.
Cloudflare – Provides DNS and HTTPS tunneling for ease and security.
GitHub – All configurations are version-controlled in a private repository.

Why Use These Methods

There are easier ways to achieve what I’ve done here, but I intentionally chose a more complex tech stack to learn and practice new technologies. This setup doesn’t necessarily reflect enterprise practices—it’s tailored for personal growth and experimentation.

I wanted a basic site to showcase my résumé and personal projects, but I didn’t want to use traditional site builders like Wix or Squarespace. Those platforms are great for simplicity, but you don’t learn anything from them. This project was a chance to challenge myself.

Evolution of the Setup

Starting with a Homelab

I originally began with a homelab built on a series of laptops configured in a Proxmox cluster. However, I soon outgrew that setup due to storage limitations—my Google Photos space was running out, and I wasn’t interested in paying for more storage. This led me to build my own NAS, which gave me hands-on experience with the ZFS filesystem (vastly superior to traditional RAID) and migrating services to a new hypervisor.

Moving to TrueNAS Scale

TrueNAS Scale became the backbone of my infrastructure, replacing the Proxmox cluster and simplifying my setup. While TrueNAS supports hosting VMs, one limitation I encountered was the lack of easy deployment options via Terraform or other Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tools. Instead, I manually built the VM for this site—just a few clicks to get an Ubuntu base VM up and running.

Automating with Ansible

Once the VM was running, I leveraged Ansible playbooks to automate the initial setup:

Creating the Ansible user.
Updating the host.
Defining folder structures and permissions for hosting the site’s files.
Installing Docker and configuring Nginx and Cloudflare containers through Docker Compose.

I do not have a separate Ansible server for running playbooks, instead I was introduced to a way of containerizing Ansible. This approach ensures I can quickly rebuild my environment if necessary, even after a catastrophic event. The Ansible container, running on my Windows workstation via WSL, can be deployed to any system that is capable of running Docker and Make.

Building the Site with Hugo

The site itself is generated using Hugo, a static site generator. Hugo runs locally (though it can also be containerized, which wasn’t necessary for my use case). I utilize themes from GitHub—designed by professionals with far better artistic skills than me—to create the content and pages.

The workflow allows me to:

Develop the site locally.
Version control changes in my homelab repository.
Deploy the updated site with a single button press.

The Magic of Cloudflare

The final step to make the site accessible is Cloudflare. It serves as my DNS provider and leverages its Tunnels feature to:

Manage site certificates.
Provide additional security features.
Offer the convenience of toggling settings via a mobile app.

These tunnels, managed through Ansible and containerized via Docker, add a layer of simplicity and peace of mind to the deployment process.

Final Thoughts

This project is a testament to my desire to learn and grow as a technologist. While this stack may seem overly complicated for a simple personal site, it has given me valuable hands-on experience with:

Hosting and hypervisor management.
Automation with Ansible.
Modern web deployment workflows.

If you’d like to dive deeper into this setup, feel free to ask me in our interview — I’d love to discuss it further!