Choosing a Platform and Moving On

The Valdivya site is officially launched. Over the course of my career, I’ve lost track of how many site launches I’ve directly been involved in as a dev, project manager or operational leader. No matter the role, it always felt great to put something out into the world.

As a solo-consultant, I had different goals for my site than I’ve had for others. It’s a landing place for those that know me and want to learn more about how I help teams. I’d gotten early feedback from new connections that they couldn’t find me when they googled my name or the business.

Was I even a real person?

So the site should solve that problem by just existing. My intent was just to slap together some AI-produced, simple HTML site and toss it in some hosting. Easy enough and move on.

I was looking for a little more. With the increased fragmentation of the social web, I wanted MY content to be, well, mine. It is a centralized reference for longer-form content and how I think about work. Whether someone googles me, is looking for answers in their favorite LLM, or is directed here by another social link, it was important to me to have real content on the site. 

Wordpress was an obvious choice. I’ve launched those sites for others.  Because it can do everything and has a plugin for anything, it just felt complicated and full of areas I’d get distracted.

Or maybe just a simple HTML site and a Substack account for the longer posts. That limits where my brand and its content lives. Split across the site and various social sites.

When I hit this point, I knew I was overthinking it.

As someone championing AI adoption, tossing it in an AI site builder did feel like the right path. I played around with quite a few and I knew the speed bumps down this road. It could build some impressive, flashy, modern looking layouts. It was the little things I was getting hung up on. Inconsistencies. Little bugs at different resolutions. All solvable too. 

I knew I’d keep hitting these points and would be constantly tinkering. I’d even enjoy working through the issues. This isn’t to downplay those tools. They are great for a ton of use cases and only getting better every day. 

I was just wanting to get back to basics. A simple site, quick to create or edit content wherever I am.

Then I found ghost.org. It’s content focused. Open source. Their out of the box official themes were good enough. It’s fast and accessible. It had everything I was looking for without needing plugins or for me to go down the rabbit hole of configuration and customization.

I did end up dusting off my dev skills and going deeper on the theme customization than I intended. I was having fun doing it too. For a single person consultancy, it works as a centralized, content focused site. I’m not dealing with little systems tweaks or caring about hosting.

Looks like there is still a place for platforms.

At some point, I’ll get some better branding, logos and images but the platform and my custom theme makes it an insignificant update as I move forward. This site is out of the way and not a separate personal project I’ll need to give thought to.

However you found your way here, consider signing up to receive future posts as I share what I’m thinking about in the operational leadership space.

At the very least when someone googles Valdivya or Jesse Hormachea, I hope they land here and see I’m real.