Building Masite: A Portfolio Website Builder — Part 1: Planning and Setup
This 8 part series focuses on building Masite: A Portfolio Website Builder. Link to the website: https://masite-portfolio-website-builder.vercel.app/
Hi there, I am Mrinal Prakash. I am a Software Developer with a passion for building efficient, scalable, and user-friendly web applications.
This is the first of the 8 part series on Masite: A Portfolio Website Builder, a tool designed to help creatives, professionals, and freelancers showcase their work in a personalized and effective way.
The journey of building Masite started from a simple idea and gradually evolved into a full-fledged platform, covering everything from planning and designing to development, deployment, and hosting.
With this blog series, I aim to walk you through each step of this process, sharing the decisions, challenges, and learnings along the way.
Motivation: Why Build Masite?
The first thing I asked myself before diving into this project was why I wanted to build it. There were plenty of portfolio website builders already available online — some free, some paid, and many open-source options. Why add another one to the mix?
The answer lies in personalization and control. Many existing solutions required you to adhere to predefined layouts and structures, limiting the extent of customization.
Although those builders offer ease of use, they often fail to cater to specific preferences, especially for developers who want to showcase unique projects. I wanted Masite to give complete control over how the portfolio looked, felt, and performed.
Another motivating factor was the learning curve involved. Many tools abstract too much of the coding and design aspects, making it hard for developers to learn from the process of building a website.
I wanted Masite to be a balance between simplicity for non-technical users and flexibility for developers who want to dig deep into the code.
On a personal level, this project was an opportunity to explore different technologies, learn how to manage large-scale applications, and hone my skills in building dynamic, responsive websites from the ground up.
The journey, I realized, would allow me to touch upon everything from front-end frameworks to server-side integration, databases, and deployment strategies.
Goals of the Masite Project
1. Build a Flexible Portfolio Builder
I wanted to create a portfolio builder that didn’t lock users into specific templates. The builder needed to offer a wide range of customization options, from layouts to color schemes to font choices.
More importantly, users should be able to create their own designs from scratch if they so wished.
2. Ensure Easy Content Management
The builder needed to include an intuitive and user-friendly dashboard where users could easily update, add, or remove projects and other content.
This required careful planning of how data would be stored and accessed, ensuring users could manage their portfolios without needing to dive into code unless they wanted to.
3. Provide Full-Stack Learning Opportunities
For developers using Masite, the builder needed to offer not only a great end-user experience but also an educational one. Whether users wanted to tweak the front-end, integrate a back-end service, or deploy the entire project, I wanted Masite to serve as a platform for learning full-stack web development.
4. Responsive and Modern Design
In today’s digital landscape, responsiveness is non-negotiable. The portfolio builder had to produce websites that looked equally stunning on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
The design had to be modern yet customizable, allowing users to make their portfolios as unique as possible.
5. Simplify Hosting and Deployment
One of the primary pain points for many users of portfolio builders is deploying the website.
I wanted Masite to simplify the deployment process, offering easy-to-understand instructions for hosting, or ideally, an integrated one-click deployment solution.
6. Support Dynamic Content
Portfolios aren’t just static collections of text and images anymore. With features like embedded videos, interactive project displays, and real-time updates, Masite needed to support various forms of dynamic content to keep portfolios engaging and up to date.
7. Make It Scalable
As more users potentially adopted the tool, scalability was a crucial factor. Whether one user or hundreds of users were building their portfolios simultaneously, the system had to be capable of handling it.
That meant building a back-end infrastructure that could grow along with the project.
Target Audience
Developers and Programmers
Developers like myself often need a place to showcase projects, open-source contributions, and technical skills.
Masite would serve as a perfect portfolio platform for developers, providing them with the control they need over design, functionality, and hosting options.
Moreover, it would allow them to tweak the codebase, thus becoming a great learning resource for full-stack development.
Designers and Creatives
For designers, the visual aspect of a portfolio is of utmost importance. Masite needed to provide a highly customizable front-end to allow designers to reflect their unique style.
Additionally, support for various media types, from images to videos and animations, would make it a great tool for creatives wanting to display their best work.
Freelancers and Agencies
Freelancers and small agencies often rely on a strong online presence to secure clients.
I wanted Masite to serve this community by allowing them to not only showcase individual projects but also present their services, achievements, and testimonials in a cohesive, professional format.
Features Intended
Customizable Layouts
One of the first and most important features was offering users the ability to choose or build their own layouts.
The idea was to provide a set of pre-defined templates that users could tweak as they saw fit, while also allowing them to build custom layouts from scratch if they had the coding know-how.
Drag-and-Drop Builder
To simplify the creation process, I envisioned a drag-and-drop interface. Users could add elements like text blocks, images, galleries, videos, and embedded content by simply dragging them into place.
This feature would make Masite accessible to users with no coding experience while giving developers the flexibility to extend the functionality.
Project and Media Management
A crucial feature was to make it easy for users to add and manage projects. Each project needed to have support for images, videos, and descriptions.
Users should be able to categorize their projects, reorder them, and display them in various ways, such as in a grid, list, or carousel format.
Responsive Design
Given the variety of devices people use today, making portfolios responsive was non-negotiable. Masite would need to produce portfolios that looked great on mobile phones, tablets, and desktop computers alike.
This required careful attention to how layouts and elements adapted to different screen sizes.
Integrated Blog
A blog feature was something I knew would add value to the builder. Many users, particularly developers and freelancers, want to include a blog as part of their online presence to share their insights, tutorials, or case studies.
Building this feature in from the start would make it easier for users to maintain their entire web presence in one place.
Conclusion
In this first part, we discussed the initial planning and setup of Masite, including motivations, goals, and technology choices.
In the next part of this series, we’ll dive deeper into Design and User Interface, where we’ll explore how I tackled responsiveness, user experience, and aesthetic choices.
If you like my work, connect with me on LinkedIn, follow me on X (formerly twitter) as well as on Medium
