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my portfolio website screenshot sadeep.me

How I Built My Portfolio Website: sadeep.me

sadeep.me

This is a record of how I built my own portfolio website from scratch — domain, hosting, theme, SSL, SEO, Search Console, email, all of it. I used a mix of manual setup, trial and error, and AI tools (Claude and ChatGPT) to get unstuck a few times along the way. Writing this down mostly for myself, but also in case it’s useful for anyone else doing the same thing.

Tools I Used

  • Domain: Spaceship
  • Hosting: ServerByte
  • CMS: WordPress
  • Theme: Astra
  • Page builder: Elementor (with Astra Starter Templates as a base)
  • SSL: Spaceship Wildcard SSL + Really Simple SSL plugin
  • URL/database fix: Better Search Replace plugin
  • SEO: Yoast SEO
  • Forms: WPForms
  • Image optimization: Smush
  • Email: Gmail webmail connected to my domain email
  • Search tracking: Google Search Console
  • AI help: Claude and ChatGPT

Step 1: Registered the Domain and Set Up Hosting

I registered sadeep.me through Spaceship and got hosting set up on ServerByte. I pointed the domain to my hosting server using an A record. Keeping the registrar and host separate like this is pretty normal — Spaceship handles my DNS, ServerByte runs the actual WordPress files and database.

Step 2: Installed WordPress

Once hosting was active, I installed WordPress on ServerByte. I actually built and tested the site on a staging URL first before pointing the real domain at it — that decision came back to bite me a little later with mixed content (more on that below).

Step 3: Picked My Theme and Built the Pages

I went with Astra as my base theme since it’s lightweight and fast, paired with Astra Starter Templates to get a head start on layout, then used Elementor to actually design and customize everything visually — no need to touch code for layout changes.

I built out my site structure as:

  • Home — intro, why work with me, featured work, my process, services, a bit of about-me, testimonials, and a contact call-to-action
  • About — my full background and story
  • Projects — portfolio/case studies
  • Services — what I offer
  • Research Library — my blog
  • Contact — contact form and details

Step 4: Activated SSL

I activated SSL through Spaceship’s Wildcard SSL and turned on Force HTTPS so every visit automatically redirects to the secure version of my site.

After turning SSL on, I ran into mixed content warnings — the browser was flagging the site as not fully secure. The cause turned out to be leftover references to my old staging URL (http://sadeep-me.us.stackstaging.com) still sitting in some images and links from when I built the site there first. I worked through this with Claude’s help to figure out the fix:

  1. Installed Really Simple SSL to handle SSL detection and force secure content across the whole site.
  2. Used Better Search Replace to run a database search-and-replace, swapping every old staging URL for https://sadeep.me.

That cleared the mixed content issue completely — the site shows fully secure HTTPS now.

Step 5: Set Up SEO

I installed Yoast SEO to handle meta titles, meta descriptions, Open Graph tags for social sharing previews, and Twitter Card data. I used ChatGPT to help write and refine the actual meta titles and descriptions so they’d read well and be more clickable in search results.

Step 6: Connected Google Search Console

I added my site to Google Search Console using HTML tag verification — generated the verification code in GSC and dropped it into the site’s head section through Yoast’s webmaster tools field. That lets me see how Google is crawling and indexing my pages, plus impressions and clicks once search traffic starts coming in.

Step 7: Connected My Email

I connected my domain email to Gmail’s webmail so I can send and receive site-related email (like contact form replies) straight from Gmail instead of a separate hosting email panel.

Step 8: Forms and Image Optimization

I set up WPForms for my contact form and connected it to my email. I also installed Smush to compress my images, since my site is fairly visual and I wanted it to stay fast.

Where Claude and ChatGPT Actually Helped

I leaned on both tools throughout this, not just at one stage:

  • Claude mainly helped me troubleshoot the SSL/mixed content problem — figuring out which plugins to use together and the right order to run them in.
  • ChatGPT helped with content and copywriting for the site, writing my SEO meta titles/descriptions, and some code snippets when I got stuck on smaller technical bits.

Between the two, having an AI to bounce problems off of saved me a lot of time I’d have otherwise spent digging through forums.

Where I’m At Now

The site’s live, fully secured with HTTPS, running on WordPress with Astra + Elementor, optimized with Yoast SEO, indexed through Google Search Console, and my email is connected through Gmail.

What’s Next

  • Submit my XML sitemap (Yoast generates this automatically) to Search Console if I haven’t already, so new pages get indexed faster.
  • Set up Google Analytics (GA4) alongside Search Console so I can see actual traffic and behavior, not just search performance.
  • Keep an eye on Smush settings as I add more project images, so page speed doesn’t slip.
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