Web Development

AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is revolutionizing technology and software development at the moment, and to no surprise. AI can help humanity in many different areas, such as diagnosing an illness at an early stage with machine learning, or assisting a driver with direction through GPS navigation, or driving you to a desired destination with autonomous vehicles. The integration of AI tools in programming workflows has transformed how developers approach coding and software engineering challenges.

Let’s face it — as developers we look at code 90% of our time we spend in front of the monitor. While there tons of fonts available for our favorite text editors, both free and paid, I have found one font in particular to be extremely enjoyable for programming productivity and code readability (and believe me - I’ve tried a few).

That is — JetBrains Mono, a free and open source font from the very same company that brought us tools like WebStorm and PyCharm.

I have always tried and followed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in every project I worked on. It’s not always an easy thing to do, but Web Accessibility (WA) is very important for modern web development and responsive design, as we all have difficulties when interacting with a computer or mobile screen, in one way or the other. For example, my eyesight is dropping as I am approaching the age of forty.

The official guide on how to deploy your website to Netlify for static site hosting and continuous deployment, which can be found here, explains the required steps for modern web development workflows:

• Step 1: Add Your New Site. Creating a new site on Netlify for your web development project is simple and perfect for software engineering teams looking for scalable cloud hosting solutions.
• Step 2: Link to Your GitHub or GitLab repository (or supported version-control tool of choice) for automated deployments
• Step 3: Authorize Netlify.
• Step 4: Select Your Repo.
• Step 5: Configure Your Settings.
• Step 6: Build Your Site.
• Step 7: All Done.

And it’s really as simple as that. The very blog you are exploring at the moment is deployed on Netlify too, and the website performance score is pretty great for SEO and user experience, as you can see on Test My Site:

Back in 2021, when I first considered adding a content management system to my static site, I evaluated several options. Netlify CMS (now called Decap CMS) was a popular choice, but at the time, it didn’t fully support my then-framework of choice, Statiq Web. The integration required workarounds that felt fragile, and I decided to stick with writing content directly in Markdown files.

The Static Site CMS Challenge

Managing content on static sites has always presented a unique challenge. Unlike dynamic CMS platforms like WordPress, static sites generate HTML at build time, which means there’s no database-driven content management out of the box. For developers comfortable with Markdown and Git, this is rarely an issue. However, for non-technical content creators or for quick edits on the go, a graphical interface becomes valuable.