Project

This repository contains the source code of my Portfolio project. My portfolio web application which I developed through this project is deployed on Digital Ocean and live on realnitinworks.com.

The Django Web Framework powers this project for the most parts while the Frontend is handled by the Bootstrap Framework and some custom styles.

The portfolio web application mainly includes my portfolio and my blog.

The Journey

I used to write blogs here. The posts were served using 3rd-party applications like Pelican and Netlify. However, I was not satisfied because I could not write the backend for serving my blog posts. Moreover, Netlify had some issues concerning SSL certificates and on some days my blog was reported as not secure. In addition to this, I didn't have a portfolio site until that point. So I decided to develop an application for my portfolio and blog from scratch, writing everything on my own.

The first thing which I did was to create a repository on Github. Then I created a Project on the repository and started listing down all the features (in Kanban style) I needed for my web application. This gave me a clear idea of my target. Slowly but surely I knocked down and completed one task after another.

Many a time I did not know how to tackle a task at first. But I stayed long with the problem without losing focus. I struggled with the problem, kept searching for the answer until I found it.

Before this project, I had experience with Django and Flask. However, I wanted to get serious with at least one of these. I decided to go with Django. But it doesn't matter. It is just my personal preference. In the past, I used to get bogged down by the UI design. That is where a framework like Bootstrap helped me to get started without getting lost in the frontend.

I containerized my applications using Docker and Docker-Compose for development and production. My applications run on containers deployed through Docker and Docker-Compose on the Digital Ocean cloud.

Features

1. Blog

   1. Post list and detail view
   2. Markdown support for rendering post content and code highlighting
      • Used Mistune Python package
      • Used Django Pagedown package for previewing markdown in the admin backend.
   3. Pagination support for the post list view
   4. Support for sharing the posts by email
   5. Comment system for the blog
      • Users of the blog can comment on posts
   6. Blog stats
      • Latest Posts
      • Most commented posts
      • Popular tags
      using Django TemplateTags
   7. Tag posts using keywords
      • Retrieve similar posts using tags
   8. RSS feeds for the posts
   9. Full-Text Search support for posts
      • Using Django Full Text Search

2. Portfolio

   1. List and Detail view of
      • Projects I have completed
      • Certificates I have achieved
      • Opensource projects I have contributed to
      • My coding profile

3. CI/CD

   When the local code changes are pushed to Github, Github Actions builds and deploys the application to Digital Ocean droplet

4. Email Support

   Used SendGrid for sending mails. For example: When someone contacts, I will get a mail notification

5. Code Styling and Formatting

   Used Black, Flake8 and isort

6. Form protection

   1. Used reCAPTCHA v3
   2. Used Django reCAPTCHA package

7. Domain and Email

   1. From Godaddy
   2. Domain: realnitinworks.com

8. HTTPS support

   1. SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt

9. Digital Ocean Deployment

   1. Used Docker and Docker-Compose
   2. Following service are deployed in containers
      • Portfolio Web application - the application running on realnitinworks.com
      • PostgreSQL database service - the database runs on PostgresSQL
      • Nginx Proxy - for serving static and media files
      • Nginx Proxy Letsencrypt - for getting and renewing SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt

Running the Project locally

$ git clone https://github.com/realnitinworks/portfolio.git

$ cd portfolio

$ docker-compose up -d # To start the application. App starts on 127.0.0.1:8000/

$ docker-compose down # To shutdown the application.

Technologies used

1. Web App - Django
2. Containerization - Docker, Docker-Compose
3. UI - Bootstrap and CSS
4. Database - PostgreSQL
5. Reverse Proxy - Nginx
6. Cloud deployment - Digital Ocean
7. CI/CD - Github Actions
8. SSL - Let's Encrypt

Advice to those who want to create their own Portfolio

1. Study just enough of a web framework.
2. List down the features you want for the portfolio.
3. Don't wait.
4. Get started.
5. Knockdown one feature at a time.
6. Persist and be consistent.
7. Use Docker for local development. This makes your life much easier without worrying about dependencies

References

1. Django 3 By Example - Antonio Mele - A great book on Django for developing real-world web applications.

   The first project in this book is, in fact, a blog application.

2. Testdriven.io course on Django and Django REST Framework

   I cannot thank Testdriven.io for the real quality courses they produce. Learned a lot from here regarding Django development for production, using Docker, etc.

3. Testdriven.io blog

   The blog posts here are equally good as their courses. My portfolio app deployment on Digital Ocean, CI/CD using Github, Heroku deployment, SSL certificate generation are all based on the learnings from their blog.