About This Site

This site is built using the following stack:

• GatsbyJS as the front end static site generator.
• WordPress as a headless CMS for the blog & portfolio pages.
• Netlify for hosting & serverless functions
• Namecheap for the domain hosting.

The site is also completely open source, feel free to check it out at https://github.com/bmorrisondev/brianmorrison.me

Why I Chose This Stack

This is actually the fourth major version of my website. For years, I hosted my site in a traditional WordPress instance on Namecheap (and a few others along the way). When I learned how static site generators worked, mainly Gatsby, I decided to explore the framework and decided to go that route, but originally on AWS instead of Netlify.

The third version of the site was actually in Gridsome, a Gatsby-like framework that uses Vue instead of React as it was my preferred front end framework at the time. I also moved the backend content away from WordPress to a completely custom CMS hosted in AWS. I ran my site like this for a few years before deciding to go back to Gatsby & WordPress. I also decided to host on Netlify instead of AWS to simplify the stack overall.

I actually like WordPress as a CMS and the newer versions of Gatsby support WordPress along with Custom Post Types and Custom Fields VERY well. It essentially allows me to completely customize my schema using a tried and true backend system.