I will have to admit, this feels momentous to me. I have approached building a blog through multiple methods and am glad I landed on this eventual result. Allow me to explain.

I have been working on a personal project with the intent of understanding how to work with APIs, aggregating data, and reformatting it into a readable, friendly UI. It is relateed to the game Helldivers 2, a game with an over-arching Galactic War. The premise of my app is to fetch the data from the community API, parse the desired data into my own API, then dynamically update the site to display the correct information. I can already sense a bit of confusion; is it not redundant to fetch data from an already-hosted API only to then build my own from that dataset? While admittedly it may appear so, I reiterate the intention of learning exactly how to host an API and call upon the data.

I have made some excellent progress with it thus far. I never thought I would take this recreational app and properly sort it out to the state it is currently in (believe me, there is still much to do…) But I wanted a means of keeping track of what I was doing; a log without it being a CHANGELOG, if you will. And while browsing krebsonsecurity it dawned on me- why not begin my own blog? I can track my projects over time, while also acting as a medium to share my development progress. My interest in the IT world and the cybersecurity sector has not weaned even a little, so I intend to keep onward.

Now, about this actual blog itself; what issues was I having that this blog result feels like such an achievement? To better understand this, we must understand how I began my Helldivers 2 app. After completing my Google Cybersecurity Certification, I found I really enjoyed the coding/terminal involvement. So I began to refresh myself on my high-school programming skills (I cannot believe it’s been at least ten years…) From this, it stemmed into me working with python libraries designed for packet sniffing. In the midst of this, I thought about using a “decoy” site to test attacks on and to monitor the decoy’s end to view the results. That’s where the idea of building a site came to me. Why I landed on the videogame Helldivers 2 is due to the game’s API being so openly available, and to maintain consistent interest in the project. I am learning important and necessary concepts while enjoying the material it’s supporting.

As I am venturing into new, unknown territory, I want to keep an active log of my progress. I journal in my pasttime as I find it be stress-relieving, so keeping a log is nothing unfamiliar to me. So I began to read up on approaches.

From my gathering, the options seemed pretty straightforward: either utilize a pre-existing framework to build your blog components, or you design your site from scratch. I decided off the get-go to write from scratch; I started the Helldivers app with the same approach, why would this be any different? Well, I would certainly end up humbling myself. My lack of experience with formatting was really starting to show, especially as I was getting into styling and positioning. Within a few days, I was feeling bogged down and almost defeated. How could I get my API app to work, but a blog is causing me trouble? I wanted to spend my time progressing my projects, not being locked-down with .css options and HTML formatting. So I turned to some pre-existing frameworks.

In came Hugo. Well-known, used often, hosts a variety of different themes for different site purposes (blogs, web store, news, etc.) the user can select. What I came to realize is the validity of the themes mixed with different libraries. Essentially, I rotated between three different themes, one of which was not a blog layout, to attempt to get the site to run locally. The headache seemed unnecessary. Again, people build and maintain blogs often; why is this slowing me down? And after research, I came across Astro.

It uses a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in an easy-to-approach fashion that made the core principles easier to understand. It feels familiar to alter and change the formatting/layout of the template given. For example, the homepage my blog opens to was rewritten by myself to include an Index as well as listing the most recent post.

The satisfaction now comes from knowing I can now properly keep this informed and updated, and hopefully if there is interest, you can follow along as well! Don’t hesitate to reach me on any of my socials.

AD