Building Gordo Labs. Part 1. Jamstack

How I started. How I selected the technology stack.

Hi there!

This is somehow the process I took in order to build this website.

The final decision around having an online place to showcase all my stuff without filter came with trouble. After A LOT of thinking and not delivering anything. You know, The shoemaker's son always goes barefoot. Or as is said in Spanish. "En casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo".

I had many versions of the website. None of them was from my pleasure. I was trying to put the knowledge I had as a product builder but with myself, and in order to sell my profile which is kinda strange and mixed. I always had struggled with doing so.

I passed through building a brand which was going to be Gordo Design, fully oriented to digital product building. Selling my capabilities of User experience, user interface, and product design and management. All packed up as a consultancy/agency brand. But in reality, I did not give a fuck about myself selling me that way.

The first fast versions of them. I was doing them just for fun, more as a way to explore other new technologies I didn't know. Vue + Gridsome. I heard it was cool to work with that Jamstack and by that time I was working a lot with Vue with a couple of clients.

But the reality was I just needed a place to throw all my stuff. All my stuff, far away from the judge of my own mind trying to model it as something specific. Just a picture of my life. Of what I did, what I'm doing and what I will do. Letting space to fill all the stuff I love to spend time doing. Not just "the professional working face". Letting me code whatever I wanted to code if needed. And let me write freely and easily without constraints when needed. And a place to express artistic and graphical content, a portfolio like mode.

It had to be easy, fast, portable, serverless. I did not want to attach this website to have to manage a server. Just plain, simple, and complex just if I want to code whatever.

After a lot of wandering around with JamStack technologies and headless CMSs, trying them all, Airtable, Strapi, Contentful. I discovered forestry (Thank you guys, you made my life) and the fucking simple integration with a Github repository of your own.

By that time I was working with a client project that needed a really fast and SEO-friendly website but their tech stack was React with Typescript and redux. And they needed a way to let content managers edit and modify that content in an easy manner. Forestry was the answer, and forestry was my answer.

I had the stack, it fits, and all my needs covered.

Forestry + Gasby (with Typescript) + building up with Netlify