Migrating to Express.js

Yesterday, I went through the process of migrating this website to Express.js, from a previously pure HTML site. I'm very happy to say that it went well, and after much testing, the website should be virtually indistinguishable from its previous form (a successful migration).

If you want to see the source for this website, it's available on my GitHub.

Rationale

When planning a new projects page for the site, the header and navigation started to become an issue; they were duplicated in every page, and any changes to them would require a lot of work to ensure consistency.

I also wanted to learn about frameworks in JS, and I felt that the best way to do so would be to make use of one on my personal website.

The simplest solution, I felt, would be to start using templating for those components, and so I settled on Express.js with ejs as the templating engine.

Implementation

Since Node and JS frameworks are fairly novel to me, I began by looking at examples to point me in the right direction. I then consulted the documentation on the functions used, which let me confidently develop the solution I use now.

Next I had to make it work with Vercel, which I currently use to host the website. So I installed their dev tools and got to work.

This was a bit more rocky, as the Express documentation on their end is missing a few details, but after a failed deployment and further research, I was able to make it work, and am happy to say it works well.

What next?

Following this success, I want to use server side rendering further to make the website easier to run. One feature I have in mind is the automatic generation of the articles table, so I don't have to manually update it when I upload a new article to the site. It makes my life easier, and lowers the chance of human error.