My Website Journey

Hugo

Static site generator

Fruition

Using Notion for your personal website

Why

• Fast and easy to set up compared to using a Static Site Generator such as Hugo, Next.js, Gatsby or Jekyll

• No need to deploy every time you make a change and you'll see the change almost instantly

• No need to set up a CI/CD pipeline for your website or push code to a repository — Notion has a Personal Pro plan if you want some form of version control for your website

• No hosting costs or unexpected bills

• No maintenance required like updating packages

• No coding required

How

1. Create a page in Notion

2. Buy a domain (I use Namecheap)

3. Use Fruition for custom domains, pretty URLs and dark mode

4. Use ImprovMX for free email forwarding via Cloudflare e.g. [email protected]

Potential downsides

• Slower

• Fewer learning opportunities if that is your goal when creating a personal website

• Less control over the look and user experience — you can't modify a component when you feel like it

Setting up custom Polywork domain

I had some issues following the instructions provided by Polywork to setup a custom domain since I was using Fruition for my personal website

1. Enter your desired domain name on the Polywork settings page e.g. https://profile.alexanguyen.com

2. Go to your website's Cloudflare dashboard

3. Navigate to the DNS page

4. Click add record
• Type: CNAME
• Name: [subdomain] e.g. profile
• Content: [Custom DNS target generated by Polywork]
• TTL: 2 min
• Proxy status: DNS only

5. Hit Save. Note: It may take up to 24 hours for the changes to propagate.

Popsy

Friendship with Fruition over, Popsy is my best friend now

Why

• Custom themes

• Can add navigation bar

• Turn links into real buttons

• Apparently faster than default Notion pages

Migration from Fruition

1. Create your site in Popsy

2. Add the new DNS records and remove the old A records

3. Publish site

4. Refresh

Need to update your website?

1. Click Sync from Notion